POETRY
for Students
Advisors Erik France: Adjunct Instructor of English, Macomb Community College, Warren, Michigan. B.A. and M.S.L.S. from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ph.D. from Temple University. Kate Hamill: Grade 12 English Teacher, Catonsville High School, Catonsville, Maryland. Joseph McGeary: English Teacher, Germantown Friends School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ph.D. in English from Duke University. Timothy Showalter: English Department Chair, Franklin High School, Reisterstown, Maryland. Certified teacher by the Maryland State Department of Education. Member of the National Council of Teachers of English. Amy Spade Silverman: English Department Chair, Kehillah Jewish High School, Palo Alto, California. Member of National
Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Teachers and Writers, and NCTE Opinion Panel. Exam Reader, Advanced Placement Literature and Composition. Poet, published in North American Review, Nimrod, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among other publications. Jody Stefansson: Director of Boswell Library and Study Center and Upper School Learning Specialist, Polytechnic School, Pasadena, California. Board member, Children’s Literature Council of Southern California. Member of American Library Association, Association of Independent School Librarians, and Association of Educational Therapists. Laura Jean Waters: Certified School Library Media Specialist, Wilton High School, Wilton, Connecticut. B.A. from Fordham University; M.A. from Fairfield University.
POETRY
for Students Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Poetry
VOLUME 33
Poetry for Students, Volume 33 Project Editor: Sara Constantakis Rights Acquisition and Management: Margaret Abendroth, Margaret Chamberlain-Gaston, Sara Crane, Robyn Young Composition: Evi Abou-El-Seoud Manufacturing: Drew Kalasky Imaging: John Watkins Product Design: Pamela A. E. Galbreath, Jennifer Wahi Content Conversion: Katrina Coach Product Manager: Meggin Condino
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Table of Contents ADVISORS
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JUST A FEW LINES ON A PAGE (by David J. Kelly) . . . . . INTRODUCTION
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LITERARY CHRONOLOGY .
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONTRIBUTORS .
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CLASSIC BALLROOM DANCES (by Charles Simic) . . . . .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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ELENA(by Pat Mora) .
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . .
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Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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50 51 52 53 55 55 57 58 67 67
FULLY EMPOWERED (by Pablo Neruda) . .
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading . THE HOLLOW MEN (by T. S. Eliot) . . .
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD (by William Wordsworth) . . . . .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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JAZZ FANTASIA (by Carl Sandburg) .
. Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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THE LOTUS FLOWERS (by Ellen Bryant Voigt) . .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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106 107 107 108 109 111 112 113 114 118 119
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120 120 122 123 125 126 129 129 141 141
MUSHROOMS(by Sylvia Plath) .
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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THE OLD STOIC(by Emily Bronte¨) .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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ON MY FIRST SON(by Ben Jonson).
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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SHOULDERS(by Naomi Shihab Nye).
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context
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Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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SYMPATHY(by Paul Laurence Dunbar) .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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TWO ECLIPSES (by Shmuel HaNagid) .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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Sources . . . . . . . . . . . Further Reading . . . . . . . . WHAT FOR(by Garrett Kaoru Hongo) .
Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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Author Biography Poem Text . . . Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . . Sources . . . . Further Reading .
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GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS .
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WOMAN WORK(by Maya Angelou) .
Author Biography Poem Summary . Themes . . . . Style . . . . . Historical Context Critical Overview . Criticism. . . .
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CUMULATIVE AUTHOR/TITLE INDEX . UPON THE BURNING OF OUR HOUSE, JULY 10TH, 1666(by Anne Bradstreet) . . . . . 243
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CUMULATIVE NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . .
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SUBJECT/THEME INDEX
CUMULATIVE INDEX OF FIRST LINES . CUMULATIVE INDEX OF LAST LINES
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Just a Few Lines on a Page I have often thought that poets have the easiest job in the world. A poem, after all, is just a few lines on a page, usually not even extending margin to margin—how long would that take to write, about five minutes? Maybe ten at the most, if you wanted it to rhyme or have a repeating meter. Why, I could start in the morning and produce a book of poetry by dinnertime. But we all know that it isn’t that easy. Anyone can come up with enough words, but the poet’s job is about writing the right ones. The right words will change lives, making people see the world somewhat differently than they saw it just a few minutes earlier. The right words can make a reader who relies on the dictionary for meanings take a greater responsibility for his or her own personal understanding. A poem that is put on the page correctly can bear any amount of analysis, probing, defining, explaining, and interrogating, and something about it will still feel new the next time you read it. It would be fine with me if I could talk about poetry without using the word ‘‘magical,’’ because that word is overused these days to imply ‘‘a really good time,’’ often with a certain sweetness about it, and a lot of poetry is neither of these. But if you stop and think about magic—whether it brings to mind sorcery, witchcraft, or bunnies pulled from top hats—it always seems to involve stretching reality to produce a result greater than the sum of its parts and pulling unexpected results out of thin air. This book
provides ample cases where a few simple words conjure up whole worlds. We do not actually travel to different times and different cultures, but the poems get into our minds, they find what little we know about the places they are talking about, and then they make that little bit blossom into a bouquet of someone else’s life. Poets make us think we are following simple, specific events, but then they leave ideas in our heads that cannot be found on the printed page. Abracadabra. Sometimes when you finish a poem it doesn’t feel as if it has left any supernatural effect on you, like it did not have any more to say beyond the actual words that it used. This happens to everybody, but most often to inexperienced readers: regardless of what is often said about young people’s infinite capacity to be amazed, you have to understand what usually does happen, and what could have happened instead, if you are going to be moved by what someone has accomplished. In those cases in which you finish a poem with a ‘‘So what?’’ attitude, the information provided in Poetry for Students comes in handy. Readers can feel assured that the poems included here actually are potent magic, not just because a few (or a hundred or ten thousand) professors of literature say they are: they’re significant because they can withstand close inspection and still amaze the very same people who have just finished taking them apart and seeing how they work. Turn them inside out, and they will still be able to
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come alive, again and again. Poetry for Students gives readers of any age good practice in feeling the ways poems relate to both the reality of the time and place the poet lived in and the reality of our emotions. Practice is just another word for being a student. The information given here helps you understand the way to read poetry; what to look for, what to expect. With all of this in mind, I really don’t think I would actually like to have a poet’s job at all. There are too many skills involved, including precision, honesty, taste, courage, linguistics, passion, compassion, and the ability to keep all sorts of people entertained at once. And that is
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just what they do with one hand, while the other hand pulls some sort of trick that most of us will never fully understand. I can’t even pack all that I need for a weekend into one suitcase, so what would be my chances of stuffing so much life into a few lines? With all that Poetry for Students tells us about each poem, I am impressed that any poet can finish three or four poems a year. Read the inside stories of these poems, and you won’t be able to approach any poem in the same way you did before. David J. Kelly College of Lake County
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Introduction Purpose of the Book The purpose of Poetry for Students (PfS) is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, enjoying, and studying poems by giving them easy access to information about the work. Part of Gale’s ‘‘For Students’’ Literature line, PfS is specifically designed to meet the curricular needs of high school and undergraduate college students and their teachers, as well as the interests of general readers and researchers considering specific poems. While each volume contains entries on ‘‘classic’’ poems frequently studied in classrooms, there are also entries containing hard-to-find information on contemporary poems, including works by multicultural, international, and women poets. The information covered in each entry includes an introduction to the poem and the poem’s author; the actual poem text (if possible); a poem summary, to help readers unravel and understand the meaning of the poem; analysis of important themes in the poem; and an explanation of important literary techniques and movements as they are demonstrated in the poem. In addition to this material, which helps the readers analyze the poem itself, students are also provided with important information on the literary and historical background informing each work. This includes a historical context essay, a box comparing the time or place the poem was written to modern Western culture, a critical
overview essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the poem. A unique feature of PfS is a specially commissioned critical essay on each poem, targeted toward the student reader. To further help today’s student in studying and enjoying each poem, information on audio recordings and other media adaptations is provided (if available), as well as reading suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on similar themes and topics. Classroom aids include ideas for research papers and lists of critical and reference sources that provide additional material on the poem.
Selection Criteria The titles for each volume of PfS are selected by surveying numerous sources on notable literary works and analyzing course curricula for various schools, school districts, and states. Some of the sources surveyed include: high school and undergraduate literature anthologies and textbooks; lists of award-winners, and recommended titles, including the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) list of best books for young adults. Input solicited from our expert advisory board—consisting of educators and librarians— guides us to maintain a mix of ‘‘classic’’ and contemporary literary works, a mix of challenging and engaging works (including genre titles that are commonly studied) appropriate for different
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age levels, and a mix of international, multicultural and women authors. These advisors also consult on each volume’s entry list, advising on which titles are most studied, most appropriate, and meet the broadest interests across secondary (grades 7–12) curricula and undergraduate literature studies.
How Each Entry Is Organized Each entry, or chapter, in PfS focuses on one poem. Each entry heading lists the full name of the poem, the author’s name, and the date of the poem’s publication. The following elements are contained in each entry: Introduction: a brief overview of the poem which provides information about its first appearance, its literary standing, any controversies surrounding the work, and major conflicts or themes within the work. Author Biography: this section includes basic facts about the poet’s life, and focuses on events and times in the author’s life that inspired the poem in question.
artistic and literary sensibilities of the time in which the work was written. If the poem is a historical work, information regarding the time in which the poem is set is also included. Each section is broken down with helpful subheads. Critical Overview: this section provides background on the critical reputation of the poem, including bannings or any other public controversies surrounding the work. For older works, this section includes a history of how the poem was first received and how perceptions of it may have changed over the years; for more recent poems, direct quotes from early reviews may also be included. Criticism: an essay commissioned by PfS which specifically deals with the poem and is written specifically for the student audience, as well as excerpts from previously published criticism on the work (if available). Sources: an alphabetical list of critical material quoted in the entry, with full bibliographical information.
Poem Text: when permission has been granted, the poem is reprinted, allowing for quick reference when reading the explication of the following section.
Further Reading: an alphabetical list of other critical sources which may prove useful for the student. Includes full bibliographical information and a brief annotation.
Poem Summary: a description of the major events in the poem. Summaries are broken down with subheads that indicate the lines being discussed.
In addition, each entry contains the following highlighted sections, set apart from the main text as sidebars:
Themes: a thorough overview of how the major topics, themes, and issues are addressed within the poem. Each theme discussed appears in a separate subhead and is easily accessed through the boldface entries in the Subject/Theme Index. Style: this section addresses important style elements of the poem, such as form, meter, and rhyme scheme; important literary devices used, such as imagery, foreshadowing, and symbolism; and, if applicable, genres to which the work might have belonged, such as Gothicism or Romanticism. Literary terms are explained within the entry, but can also be found in the Glossary. Historical Context: this section outlines the social, political, and cultural climate in which the author lived and the poem was created. This section may include descriptions of related historical events, pertinent aspects of daily life in the culture, and the
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Media Adaptations: if available, a list of audio recordings as well as any film or television adaptations of the poem, including source information. Topics for Further Study: a list of potential study questions or research topics dealing with the poem. This section includes questions related to other disciplines the student may be studying, such as American history, world history, science, math, government, business, geography, economics, psychology, etc. Compare & Contrast: an ‘‘at-a-glance’’ comparison of the cultural and historical differences between the author’s time and culture and late twentieth century or early twenty-first century Western culture. This box includes pertinent parallels between the major scientific, political, and cultural movements of the time or place the poem was written, the time or place the poem was set (if a historical work), and modern Western culture. Works written after 1990 may not have this box.
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What Do I Read Next?: a list of works that might give a reader points of entry into a classic work (e.g., YA or multicultural titles) and/ or complement the featured poem or serve as a contrast to it. This includes works by the same author and others, works from various genres, YA works, and works from various cultures and eras.
Other Features PfS includes ‘‘Just a Few Lines on a Page,’’ a foreword by David J. Kelly, an adjunct professor of English, College of Lake County, Illinois. This essay provides a straightforward, unpretentious explanation of why poetry should be marveled at and how Poetry for Students can help teachers show students how to enrich their own reading experiences. A Cumulative Author/Title Index lists the authors and titles covered in each volume of the PfS series. A Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index breaks down the authors and titles covered in each volume of the PfS series by nationality and ethnicity. A Subject/Theme Index, specific to each volume, provides easy reference for users who may be studying a particular subject or theme rather than a single work. Significant subjects from events to broad themes are included. A Cumulative Index of First Lines (beginning in Vol. 10) provides easy reference for users who may be familiar with the first line of a poem but may not remember the actual title. A Cumulative Index of Last Lines (beginning in Vol. 10) provides easy reference for users who may be familiar with the last line of a poem but may not remember the actual title. Each entry may include illustrations, including photo of the author and other graphics related to the poem.
Citing Poetry for Students When writing papers, students who quote directly from any volume of Poetry for Students may use the following general forms. These examples are based on MLA style; teachers may request that students adhere to a different style, so the following examples may be adapted as needed. When citing text from PfS that is not attributed to a particular author (i.e., the Themes,
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Style, Historical Context sections, etc.), the following format should be used in the bibliography section: ‘‘Angle of Geese.’’ Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 8–9. When quoting the specially commissioned essay from PfS (usually the first piece under the ‘‘Criticism’’ subhead), the following format should be used: Velie, Alan. Critical Essay on ‘‘Angle of Geese.’’ Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 7–10. When quoting a journal or newspaper essay that is reprinted in a volume of PfS, the following form may be used: Luscher, Robert M. ‘‘An Emersonian Context of Dickinson’s ‘The Soul Selects Her Own Society’.’’ ESQ: A Journal of American Renaissance 30.2 (1984): 111–16. Excerpted and reprinted in Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale, 1998. 266–69. When quoting material reprinted from a book that appears in a volume of PfS, the following form may be used: Mootry, Maria K. ‘‘‘Tell It Slant’: Disguise and Discovery as Revisionist Poetic Discourse in ‘The Bean Eaters’.’’ A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction. Ed. Maria K. Mootry and Gary Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. 177–80, 191. Excerpted and reprinted in Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 22–24.
We Welcome Your Suggestions The editorial staff of Poetry for Students welcomes your comments and ideas. Readers who wish to suggest poems to appear in future volumes, or who have other suggestions, are cordially invited to contact the editor. You may contact the editor via E-mail at:
[email protected]. Or write to the editor at: Editor, Poetry for Students Gale 27500 Drake Road Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535
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Literary Chronology 993: Shmuel ha-Nagid is born in Cordoba, Spain.
Poems, using the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
1044: Shmuel ha-Nagid’s poem ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ is composed.
1848: Emily Jane Bronte¨ dies of tuberculosis on December 19 at Haworth in Yorkshire, England.
1056: Smuel ha-Nagid dies in Grenada, Spain. 1572: Ben Jonson is born on or about June 11 in London, England. 1612: Anne Bradstreet is born in Northamptonshire, England. 1616: Ben Jonson’s poem ‘‘On My First Son’’ is published in his folio Epigrams. 1637: Ben Jonson dies on August 16 in London, England. 1672: Anne Bradstreet dies of tuberculosis on September 16 in Andover, Massachusetts. 1678: Anne Bradstreet’s poem ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ is published in the collection Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight. 1770: William Wordsworth is born on April 7 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. 1815: William Wordsworth’s poem ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ is published in the collection Poems, in Two Volumes.
1850: William Wordsworth dies on April 23 at Rydal Mount, Rydal, Westmoreland, England. 1872: Paul Laurence Dunbar is born on June 27 in Dayton, Ohio. 1878: Carl August Sandburg is born on January 6 in Galesburg, Illinois. 1888: T.S. Eliot is born Thomas Stearns Eliot on September 26 in St. Louis, Missouri. 1899: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem ‘‘Sympathy’’ is published in the collection Lyrics of the Hearthside. 1904: Pablo Neruda is born on July 12 in Parral, Chile. 1906: Paul Laurence Dunbar dies of tuberculosis on February 9 in Dayton, Ohio. 1920: Carl Sandburg’s poem ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is published in the collection Smoke and Steel. 1925: T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is published in Poems, 1909-1925.
1818: Emily Jane Bronte¨ is born on July 30 at Thornton near Bradford, England.
1928: Maya Angelou is born on April 28 in St. Louis, Missouri.
1845: Emily Jane Bronte¨’s poem ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ is published in the Bronte¨ sisters’ collection
1932: Sylvia Plath is born on October 27 in Boston, Massachusetts.
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1938: Charles Simic is born on May 9 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. 1942: Pat Mora is born on January 19 in El Paso, Texas.
1967: Carl Sandburg dies of heart failure on July 22 in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
1943: Carl Sandburg wins the Pulitzer Prize in History for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. 1943: Ellen Bryant Voigt is born on May 9 in Danville, Virginia.
1975: Pablo Neruda’s poem ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is published in the collection Fully Empowered.
1948: T.S. Eliot receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1951: Garrett Kaoru Hongo is born on May 30 in Volcano, Hawaii. 1952: Naomi Shihab Nye is born on March 12 in St. Louis, Missouri. 1953: Carl Sandburg wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his Complete Poems.
1973: Pablo Neruda dies on September 23 in Santiago, Chile.
1978: Maya Angelou’s poem ‘‘Woman Work’’ is published in the collection And Still I Rise. 1980: Charles Simic’s poem ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is published in the collection Classic Ballroom Dances. 1982: Garrett Kaoru Hongo’s poem ‘‘What For’’ is published in the collection Yellow Light. 1984: Pat Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is published in the collection Chants.
1960: Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is published in the collection The Colossus.
1987: Ellen Bryant Voigt’s poem ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is published in The Lotus Flowers.
1963: Sylvia Plath commits suicide by gassing herself in an oven on February 11 in London, England. 1965: T.S. Eliot dies on January 4 in London, England.
1990: Charles Simic wins the Pulitzer Prize in Literature for his collection The World Doesn’t End.
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1994: Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘‘Shoulders’’ is published in the collection Red Suitcase.
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Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the copyright holders of the excerpted criticism included in this volume and the permissions managers of many book and magazine publishing companies for assisting us in securing reproduction rights. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/Kresge Library Complex, and the University of Michigan Libraries for making their resources available to us. Following is a list of the copyright holders who have granted us permission to reproduce material in this volume of PfS. Every effort has been made to trace copyright, but if omissions have been made, please let us know. COPYRIGHTED EXCERPTS IN PfS, VOLUME 33, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS: American Book Review, v. 6, January-February, 1984. Copyright Ó 1984 Writer’s Review, Inc. Reproduced by permission.—Antioch Review, v. 62, winter, 2004. Copyright Ó 2004 by the Antioch Review Inc. Reproduced by permission of the Editors.—Atlantic Online, November 24, 1999 for ‘‘Song and Story’’ by Steven Cramer. Copyright Ó 1999 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the author.—Bilingual Review, v. 21, September-December, 1996. Copyright Ó 1996 by Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingu¨e, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Bronte¨
Studies: The Journal of the Bronte¨ Society, v. 30, February 5, 2005. Copyright Ó Bronte Society 2005. Reproduced by permission.—Canadian Review of American Studies, v. 34, 2004. Ó Canadian Review of American Studies 2004. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.—Centennial Review, v. 23, summer, 1979; v. 36, spring, 1992. Copyright Ó 1979, 1992 by Centennial Review. Both reproduced by permission.—Detroit Free Press, September 10, 2007; March 18, 2009. Copyright Ó 2007, 2009 Detroit Free Press Inc. Both reproduced by permission of the Detroit Free Press.—Essays in Literature, v. 21, fall, 1994. Copyright Ó 1994 by Western Illinois University. Reproduced by permission.— Explicator, v. 38, summer, 1980; v. 48, fall, 1989; v. 56, winter, 1998; v. 57, spring, 1999; v. 59, summer, 2001; v. 60, spring, 2002. Copyright Ó 1980, 1989, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002 by Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation. All reproduced with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 200361802.—The Journal of Ethnic Studies, v. 12, winter, 1985. Reproduced by permission.—MELUS, v. 27, summer, 2002. Copyright MELUS: The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2002. Reproduced by permission.—Modern Language Quarterly, v. 3, March, 1942. Copyright Ó 1992 University of Washington. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press.—Nation, v. 254, January 27, 1992. Copyright Ó 1992 by The Nation Magazine/The Nation Company, Inc. Reproduced by
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permission.—New Republic, v. 214, May 6, 1996. Copyright Ó 1996 by The New Republic, Inc. Reproduced by permission of The New Republic.—North American Review, v. 221, March 25, 2009. Copyright Ó 2009 by the University of Northern Iowa. Reproduced by permission from The North American Review.—Olympian, February 10, 2008. Copyright Ó 2008 The Olympian. Reproduced by permission.—Parnassus: Poetry in Review, v. 25, 2001 for ‘‘The Prince and the Paupered: Medieval Hebrew Poetry Meets the TwentyFirst Century’’ by Jay Ladin. Copyright Ó 2001 Poetry in Review Foundation, NY. Reproduced by permission of the publisher and the author.— Poets & Writers Magazine, v. 20, SeptemberOctober, 1992. Copyright Ó 1992 Poets & Writers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Poets & Writers, Inc., 90 Broad Street, New York, NY, 10004, www.pw.org.—South Atlantic Quarterly, v. 59, 1960. Copyright Ó 1960 Duke University Press. Copyright renewed 1988 by Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press.—Studies in Philology, v. 75, winter, 1978; v. 86, spring, 1989. Copyright Ó 1978, 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press. Both used by permission.—Virginia Quarterly Review, v. 82, winter, 2006. Copyright 2006, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of Virginia. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.— Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, v. 25, August 6, 2009. Copyright Ó 2009 American Educational Trust. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission. COPYRIGHTED EXCERPTS IN PfS, VOLUME 33, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: Angelou, Maya. From And Still I Rise. Random House, 1980. Copyright Ó 1978 by Maya
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Angelou. Reproduced by permission of Random House, Inc.—Dunbar, Paul Laurence. From ‘‘Sympathy,’’ in The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Edited by Joanne M. Braxton. University Press of Virginia, 1993. Originally published by Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1913. This edition copyright Ó 1993 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of the University of Virginia Press.—HaNagid, Shmuel. From Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid. Translated by Peter Cole from the Hebrew. Princeton University Press, 1996. Copyright Ó 1996 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.—Hongo, Garrett Kaoru. From Yellow Light. Wesleyan University Press, 1982. Copyright Ó 1982 by Garrett Kaoru Hongo. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.—Nye, Naomi Shihab. From Red Suitcase. BOA Editions, 1994. Copyright Ó 1994 Naomi Shihab Nye. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Simic, Charles. From ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ in Selected Early Poems. Geroge Braziller, Inc., 1999. Copyright Ó 1999 by Charles Simic. Reproduced by permission.—Voigt, Ellen Bryant. From ‘‘The Lotus Flowers,’’ in The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry. Edited by Leon Stokesbury. University of Arkansas Press, 1999. Copryight Ó 1987 by Ellen Bryant Voigt. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Inc.—Wordsworth, William. From ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’ in William Wordsworth: The Poems, Volume 1. Edited by John O. Hayden. Penguin, 1977. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books, Ltd.
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Contributors Susan K. Andersen: Andersen is a writer and college English teacher. Entry on ‘‘Sympathy.’’ Original essay on ‘‘Sympathy.’’
literature for a variety of educational publishers. Entry on ‘‘On My First Son.’’ Original essay on ‘‘On My First Son.’’
Bryan Aubrey: Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. Entries on ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ and ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ Original essays on ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ and ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’
Michael J. O’Neal: O’Neal holds a Ph.D. in English literature. Entries on ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ and ‘‘Two Eclipses.’’ Original essays on ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ and ‘‘Two Eclipses.’’
Jennifer Bussey: Bussey is an independent writer specializing in literature. Entry on ‘‘What For.’’ Original essay on ‘‘What For.’’
Claire Robinson: Robinson has an M.A. in English. Entry on ‘‘Mushrooms.’’ Original essay on ‘‘Mushrooms.’’
Catherine Dominic: Dominic is a novelist and a freelance writer and editor. Entries on ‘‘Elena’’ and ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666.’’ Original essays on ‘‘Elena’’ and ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666.’’ Cynthia Gower: Gower is a novelist, playwright, and freelance writer. Entry on ‘‘Jazz Fantasia.’’ Original essay on ‘‘Jazz Fantasia.’’ Diane Andrews Henningfeld: Henningfeld is a professor emerita at Adrian College where she taught literature and writing for many years. She continues to write widely about
Bradley A. Skeen: Skeen is a classics professor. Entry on ‘‘Old Stoic.’’ Original essay on ‘‘Old Stoic.’’ Leah Tieger: Tieger is a freelance writer and editor. Entries on ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ and ‘‘The Lotus Flowers.’’ Original essays on ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ and ‘‘The Lotus Flowers.’’ Rebecca Valentine: Valentine is a freelance writer with an emphasis in English literature and history. Entries on ‘‘Shoulders’’ and ‘‘Woman Work.’’ Original essays on ‘‘Shoulders’’ and ‘‘Woman Work.’’
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Classic Ballroom Dances Charles Simic has come to be regarded as one of America’s most important poets—a remarkable achievement given that English is not his native language. ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is the title poem in Simic’s 1980 collection of poems, Classic Ballroom Dances. The collection won the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award and the Poetry Society of America’s di Castagnola Award in 1980. Like nearly all of Simic’s poems, ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is brief, consisting of just sixteen lines, and is written in simple, straightforward language. Its purpose is not to outline a point of view, tell a story, or develop a situation. Rather, its purpose is to evoke an image by drawing a number of implicit comparisons between the people’s activities and dancing.
CHARLES SIMIC 1980
It can be difficult to classify or attach a label to contemporary poets like Simic, including the broader category called Modernism, given that most draw on a wide range of poetic traditions for their inspiration. Nevertheless, many critics see elements of the artistic movement called surrealism in Simic’s work. Surrealism was a movement that dominated both literature and the visual arts between World War I and World War II, and that has continued to have an influence on more contemporary poets. The goal of the surrealists was to create startling imagery, often juxtaposing words and phrases in ways that defied reason. The surrealists tried to link conscious and unconscious forms of expression to create a new, fuller reality—what surrealism’s
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family had to evacuate their home because of bombings. The postwar period was little better. Yugoslavia, like other Eastern European nations, faced economic turmoil as it became a Soviet satellite state ruled by a Communist dictator. Simic’s father left for Italy to find work, but when the family tried to leave Yugoslavia to join him, they were stopped by the authorities. Meanwhile, Simic was by all accounts a poor student and was regarded as something of a juvenile delinquent.
Charles Simic (Ó Christopher Felver / Corbis)
spokesman, French writer Andre´ Breton, called a ‘‘surreality’’ in his manifesto of surrealism, published first in 1924, then in a revised version in 1929. (Breton, however, did not coin the word; it was first used by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917.) Accordingly, the emphasis in surrealist poetry, including that written by Simic, is on the psychological, unconscious thought processes. This surrealist tendency is evident in ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on May 9, 1938. (Yugoslavia, literally ‘‘Land of the South Slavs,’’ no longer exists; during most of the twentieth century, the nation called Yugoslavia was an artificial confederation of various ethnic states that have since declared their independence. Belgrade is the capital of Serbia, one of those states.) Simic spent his childhood surviving the horrors of World War II; on numerous occasions he and his
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The family’s fortunes changed in 1954 when they received permission to move to Paris. During his year in Paris, Simic studied English and attended night school. Finally, the family traveled to the United States to join Simic’s father, who was working by now for the American company he had worked for before the war. After landing in New York City, the family moved to Chicago, where Simic was enrolled in school. There he encountered teachers who seemed to care about him, and he flourished as a student. During his high school years he became interested in literature, especially poetry. He later quipped, though, that one of his motivations for writing poetry was that at the time it seemed a good way to meet girls. Simic published his first poems in 1959, and he continued to write poetry while taking night classes and working as an office boy for a Chicago newspaper until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. Simic destroyed most of these early poems. After finishing his military service in 1963, Simic enrolled at New York University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1966. He worked as an editorial assistant for a photography magazine in New York City until 1969. From 1970 to 1973, he taught English at the State University of California at Hayward. Meanwhile, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1971. Beginning in 1973, Simic taught English literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, though he has also been a visiting professor at Boston University and Columbia University. He has since retired. A prolific poet, Simic published his first collection, What the Grass Says, in 1967. Since then, he has published numerous collections, including Somewhere among Us a Stone Is Taking Notes (1969), Dismantling the Silence (1971), White (1972), Charon’s Cosmology (1977), Classic Ballroom Dances (1980), Selected Poems, 1963–1983
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(1985), Unending Blues (1986), The World Doesn’t End (1989), The Book of Gods and Devils (1990), Hotel Insomnia (1992), Walking the Black Cat: Poems (1996), Jackstraws (2000), and his most recent collection, Aunt Lettuce, I Want to Peek under Your Skirt (2005). A collection of sixty of his most popular poems was published in 2008. Simic has also published hundreds of poems in such publications as New Yorker, Poetry, Nation, Kayak, Atlantic, Esquire, Chicago Review, New Republic, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, and Harvard Magazine. In 1990 Simic received a Pulitzer Prize for his collection The World Doesn’t End. In addition to writing his own poetry, he has translated the poetry of numerous eastern European writers and has written and published various works of literary criticism. In August 2007, the U.S. Library of Congress appointed Simic as the nation’s fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
POEM TEXT Grandmothers who wring the necks Of chickens; old nuns With names like Theresa, Marianne, Who pull schoolboys by the ear; 5
The hesitation of the early-morning customer Peeking through the window grille Of a pawnshop; the weave of a little kid Who is walking to school with eyes closed; And the ancient lovers, cheek to cheek, On the dance floor of the Union Hall, Where they also hold charity raffles On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November.
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POEM SUMMARY Title Unlike many poems, ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ would make little sense without its title. The title announces the subject matter of the poem, although the poem itself only once uses the word dance. The title evokes a number of responses. The word classic suggests something traditional, perhaps even old-fashioned, but it also carries numerous other implications:
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timelessness, agelessness, stylishness, and elegance, something that will abide and last. This sense of something traditional and enduring from the past is reinforced by the mention not just of dances but of ballroom dances. The reference is to one of the formal, structured dances that were popular in past generations, such as the fox-trot, the jitterbug, the waltz, the polka, and various Latin and South American dances such as the cha-cha and the tango. These dances always involve a partner, and the two partners, who generally maintain physical contact, have to move in synchronization, using precise steps. The title’s reference to dances can be interpreted literally, but the word dance can have broader connotations. For instance, a person can dance around a topic, meaning to evade it. The word can suggest the social relations between people, who perform a dance as they interact with one another. The word suggests movement in time and space. It suggests a rhythm and structure not just on the dance floor but in life. It also suggests that people can engage in stereotypical, predictable movements as they pursue their daily activities.
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The intricate steps of pickpockets Working the crowd of the curious At the scene of an accident; the slow shuffle Of the evangelist with a sandwich board;
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‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ consists of four four-line stanzas. It also comprises a single ‘‘sentence,’’ although the sentence is not grammatically complete. The poem is a series of images, each image anchored by a noun modified by various words and phrases. Linking the lines of the first stanza are references to elderly women. Grandmothers are said to wring chickens’ necks, perhaps a glancing reference to folk dances such as the chicken dance, a popular rhythm-and-blues dance in the 1950s, or perhaps to a folk dance by the same name in German-speaking countries. Elderly nuns, with stereotypical, old-fashioned names, are then said to yank the ears of schoolboys, the type of discipline that nuns in a former age routinely inflicted on unruly boys. The two images suggest a perverse form of dancing: the grandmother is partnered with a chicken as she kills it, presumably to make a meal of it, and the nun is partnered with a schoolboy.
Stanza 2 The second stanza contains images that seem more explicitly related to dancing. Pickpockets are said to engage in intricate steps. They move
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stealthily about a crowd of people who have gathered to gawk at the scene of an accident; the implication is that the attention of the people in the crowd is so riveted on the accident that the pickpocket can easily steal their belongings. The next image employs the word shuffle to describe the movement of a preacher who is wearing a sandwich board. This type of advertising tool was commonly used in the past and is still used on occasion today. It consists of two boards hooked together by straps. A person inserts his or her head up through the straps, between the boards, so that one board hangs in front and one hangs in back. In this way a sandwich is formed. The boards, then, would be painted with a message. In the case of an evangelist, the message would presumably be of religious beliefs (for example, ‘‘Repent’’ or ‘‘The End Is Near’’), or perhaps an advertisement for an upcoming revival meeting, an evangelistic gathering intended to promote enthusiasm for faith in a crowd. The evangelist’s shuffle is said to be slow, providing an implicit link with the elderly women of the first stanza, who likewise could be presumed to move slowly. Further linkage is provided by the religious references—the nun in stanza 1 and the evangelist in stanza 2.
Stanza 3 Like the first two stanzas, stanza 3 also contains two images. The first invites the reader to imagine a person walking about in the early morning and pausing to look through the barred windows of a pawnshop. The person is described as hesitant, perhaps suggesting that he or she is embarrassed to look at the goods for sale in a pawnshop, which sometimes carries implications of seediness; by reputation, only poor, disreputable people frequent pawnshops. Or perhaps the person is hesitant because he or she longs to own some of the goods for sale but cannot afford them—or perhaps is thinking about raising some money by selling something at the pawnshop. The stanza’s second image is a child walking to school with his eyes closed. Again, there are linkages. Reference is made to the child’s eyes, just as the customer outside the pawnshop is said to peek inside; further, reference to the child walking to school echoes the earlier reference to the schoolboy whose ear was being pulled by the nun. The child is weaving rather than moving in a straight line, making the nature of the child’s movement consistent with the hesitation of the pawnshop customer.
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Stanza 4 The fourth stanza makes explicit reference to dancing. Again, as in the previous stanzas, two images are created. The first is of old lovers who dance closely, their cheeks pressed together, on the floor of a union hall. Again there is a reference to advancing age, echoing the images of grandmothers and elderly nuns in stanza 1 and the slow-moving evangelist in stanza 2, and contrasting with the schoolchildren in stanzas 1 and 3. It is unclear—and unimportant—what union hall Simic is referring to. The location is probably generic, referring to any meeting hall used by a local labor union but also used for dances and other events. It is possible that Simic had in mind more specifically a famous nightspot in Brooklyn, New York, call the Union Hall, where bands play and people dance. This type of venue would also be a place where raffles for charity would be held. These raffles are imagined to take place on a rainy weeknight, on Mondays, presumably when people have little else to do after the weekend. They are also imagined to take place during the month of November, but a November that never ends. November, particularly in the northern parts of the United States (Simic wrote the poem while teaching in New Hampshire), is often regarded as the gloomiest, most depressing month of the year. The crisp sunshine and colorful foliage of autumn has ended, trees are barren, the snowfall of winter and the winter holiday season have not started, and the weather is often cloudy, chilly, and rainy.
THEMES Old Age ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is a poem that does not lend itself readily to thematic analysis. In the first place, the poem consists of just a single sentence, and the sentence is not even grammatically complete. Thus, it never really makes a statement. Rather, the poem consists of a series of images. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern the glimmerings of a theme. One theme that links the images is that of old age. The first word of the poem is grandmothers, followed by a reference to old nuns. Later, the evangelist is said to be shuffling, suggesting the slow, hesitant walk of an elderly man. In the final stanza, reference is made to ancient lovers who are dancing. The
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Write a poem that begins with a three-word title paralleling ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’ Such a title would have two adjectives, then a noun that refers to the subject matter. Examples might include ‘‘Ancient Mythic Creatures’’ or ‘‘Cranky Hungry Babies.’’ In your poem, create images that suggest different ways of looking at the topic you have chosen. If your native language is not English, write the poem in your native language and be prepared to translate it for your classmates.
If you have some knowledge of a foreign language, try writing a similar poem in that language. In a small group discussion, describe for your peers the difficulties you faced in writing poetry in a language that is not your native tongue.
Conduct research into classic ballroom dances. What are some of the dances? Where did they originate? When were they popular? Find images of people doing these dances on the Internet and create a PowerPoint presentation to introduce classmates to these dances with visuals. Alternatively, find a willing partner and demonstrate some of these dances for your classmates.
Locate another poem whose subject is dancing. There are numerous possibilities: ‘‘Dancer’’ by Carl Sandburg, ‘‘The Harlem Dancer’’ by Claude McKay, ‘‘Indian Dancer’’ by Sarojini Naidu, ‘‘The Baby’s Dance’’ by Ann Taylor, ‘‘I cannot dance upon my Toes’’ by Emily Dickinson, ‘‘Sweet Dancer’’ by William Butler Yeats, ‘‘Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks at the Dancers’’ by William Butler Yeats, ‘‘The Dance’’ by R. S. Thomas, ‘‘Dance-Hall Girls’’ by Robert William Service, ‘‘if a living dance upon dead minds’’ by E. E. Cummings, or ‘‘Reasons For Attendance’’ by Philip Larkin. Write an essay in which you compare the poem you’ve selected with ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ focusing on the nature of the imagery the two poets use.
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Surrealism was not confined to literature. Many practitioners of the visual arts used surrealist techniques. Locate a copy of a surrealist painting or sculpture, perhaps in an art book or on the Internet. Display the piece of art to your classmates and explain how the piece you have selected embodies the principles of surrealism, perhaps in much the same way Simic does in ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’
Many critics—and Simic himself—note that Simic’s poetry is heavily influenced by his early childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia. Investigate the history of Yugoslavia during World War II and the postwar years. Prepare a chart that lists specific events and social/political developments that might have had a profound impact on a boy such as Charles Simic during that time. Charles Simic’s other passion, besides poetry, is American jazz, which immediately attracted him when he heard it for the first time on the radio when he was living in Paris. Conduct research into the American jazz music of the 1950s. Locate sound recordings of some of this jazz on disc or records. Play some jazz selections that Simic might have listened to as a youth for your classmates. Alternatively, if you play an instrument, perform some jazz selections for your classmates. Explain how you think jazz music might have influenced Simic’s poetry. In 2007 Simic was appointed the nation’s poet laureate by the Library of Congress. Write a brief report on poets laureate of the United States. What does the phrase mean? What other poets have served in this position? What is the history of the poet laureate? What duties does a poet laureate have? Use George Ancona’s young adult book Let’s Dance to explore the role of dance in many cultures. Choose a dance and demonstrate it for the class while explaining its purpose in that culture.
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Students practice classical dance (Michal Cizek / AFP / Getty Image)
very topic of the poem, classic ballroom dances, suggests something from another age or another generation. These references to age have a counterpoint in the references to schoolchildren; the nun is said to pull schoolboys by their ears, and a small child is said to be walking to school. Yet Simic never makes an explicit statement about any of these people. The poem simply imagines them engaged in characteristic activities as they go about their lives. The poem ends with an image of sadness, as charity raffles are imagined as taking place on a rainy night in a November that has no end. The reader is left to speculate about the meaning of Simic’s poem. Perhaps the poem is intended to suggest an eternal cycle of people caught in their routine; the routine of the elderly people has long been established, and that of the schoolchildren is in the process of being formed. Ultimately, though, the poem invites the reader to see such people in a new way and to experience their loneliness and perhaps sorrow as they dance their way through their daily existence.
Observation To state that poets and creative writers in general are astute observers of the human condition is to
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state the obvious. What is unusual about ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is that it is based entirely on observation, with no explicit commentary. Generally, a feature of poetry is the use of simile and metaphor, figures of speech that make comparisons between otherwise unlike objects. ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ defies this tendency by containing no simile or metaphor. Each of the statements made about the people in the poem or their activities is simply observed and reported, without the implicit commentary of figures of speech. Thus, grandmothers wring the necks of chickens, nuns pull the ears of schoolboys, pickpockets steal from people, an evangelist walks about in a sandwich board, a customer looks into the window of a pawnshop, a child walks to school, and lovers dance. The emphasis is entirely on the person or activity itself, with no comparison to any other thing or activity. The only expression in the poem that suggests a figure of speech occurs at the very end, where November is said to be eternal. Literally, of course, such a statement is untrue, but figurative the phrase suggests an ongoing depressive state, where gloom and chill seem to last forever. With this one exception, the poem merely presents the
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results of observation. In this sense, theme and style interact. The style of the poem suggests a theme: that the poet, or anyone, can catch people going about their activities, freeze those activities in time, and allow the activities to speak for themselves, without comment. That said, however, it must be recognized that the poem taken as a whole is a metaphor. By labeling the poem ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ Simic makes clear that he sees a metaphorical connection between the activities he reports and dancing. But rather than browbeating the reader with the comparison, the comparison remains implied by the title of the poem. The goal of the poem, then, is to observe and present experience, then invite the reader to see the experience in a new and starling way.
STYLE Grammar Normally, readers do not think about traditional grammar when they read poetry. Poetry routinely bends the rules of traditional grammar to create new and interesting verbal effects. Such is the case with Simic’s ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’ The poem, consisting of four four-line stanzas, comprises a single sentence, but the sentence is incomplete, for it lacks a predicate. (The predicate is the part of a sentence that expresses something about the subject, usually consisting of a verb and an object or objects.) Accordingly, the poem is made up entirely of a sequence of phrases, each anchored by a noun. The noun in the first such phrase is grandmothers, whose activity of wringing chickens’ necks is contained in a subordinate clause. (A subordinate clause cannot stand alone, because it depends on the previous phrase for its meaning.) Similarly, the old nuns’ activity of pulling the ears of schoolboys is contained in a subordinate clause. In the second stanza, the noun is not the person but the activity. Thus, the anchor noun of the pickpockets is their intricate steps, and that of the evangelist is his slow shuffle. This pattern continues in the third stanza, where the anchor noun of the pawnshop customer is his hesitation, while the anchor noun of the small child walking to school is his weave. In the final stanza, Simic returns to the grammar of the first stanza, with the pair of ancient dancing lovers as his anchor noun. The poem then in a
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sense trails off into a description of the place where the ancient lovers are dancing. The purpose of this kind of grammatical structure is to explicitly avoid making clear, rational statements about the topic at hand. The poem does not have a predicate, meaning that it does not state anything using the conventional grammatical structure of noun plus verb plus modifiers. Rather, it presents the reader with a series of images. The reader is invited to envision the people—grandmothers, nuns, pickpockets, an evangelist, a customer, a little kid, and a pair of ancient lovers—caught in a moment in time doing something that might be regarded as typical of them.
Surrealism The word surreal has entered the everyday vocabulary of English and is often used to mean ‘‘odd,’’ ‘‘unusual,’’ or ‘‘unexpected.’’ Originally, however, it was derived to denote an artistic movement called surrealism. The word joins realism to the prefix ‘‘sur-,’’ which generally means something like ‘‘over’’ or ‘‘above’’; thus, the word surmount means ‘‘to overcome.’’ Surrealism was an artistic movement that tried to identify and capture a higher psychological reality. It explicitly rejected logic and rationality in favor of artistic forms of expression that emphasized the irrational, illogical movement of the mind as it encountered experience. The movement became popular after World War I. That war, which left millions dead and wounded, came to be regarded as a kind of madness that represented the inevitable outcome of Western rational thought, in particular because war planners used science to find new, more efficient ways to kill: the airplane, mustard gas, the machine gun. Accordingly, during the post-World War I period, many artists and thinkers explored new ways of confronting reality. Many were attracted to the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, who emphasized the irrational subconscious mind to explain mental disorders (or even to explain the behavior of people who were not mentally disturbed). The result was forms of art that were often puzzling, absurd, startling, and at times unnerving. Readers and art lovers often did not understand them, for the works envisioned experience as chaotic, irrational, and often bizarre. To label ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ as a surrealist poem, or Simic as a surrealist poet, is unnecessarily restrictive. Like many contemporary
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1980: Another eastern European writer, Czeslaw Milosz, from Poland, is awarded a major literary prize, in this case the Nobel Prize in Literature. Milosz is regarded as one of the world’s most influential poets. Today: The 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is Frenchman Jean-Marie Gustave Le Cle´zio, who writes novels, essays, short stories, and books for children. 1980: In May, Josip Broz Tito, the Communist dictator of Yugoslavia in the postWorld War II period, dies, putting an end to that chapter of Simic’s early life. Today: Serbia is its own independent nation, one of the last to leave the former Yugoslavia. After terrible violence in the late 1990s, when Serbia, still part of Yugoslavia, supported rebellions in Bosnia and Croatia, as well as incidents of genocide, the country has
poets, Simic inherited a wide range of poetic traditions that inspired his writing. He differs from the surrealists, for example, in writing poems that are generally regarded as simple—not in the negative sense of ‘‘simplistic’’ but rather in the sense of using ordinary, everyday language rather than the abstruse (or, difficult to understand) language that sometimes characterizes contemporary poetry. Indeed, the source of much of his popularity is that his poems are eminently readable by people who are not themselves poets or literary critics. His poems sometimes contain violence, and often they are marked by sadness, but they also contain humorous elements. It would be more accurate to suggest that Simic’s poetry, including ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ has some of the characteristics of surrealist poetry. In particular, the poem is built around a sequence of images rather than logical statements. This movement from one image to another suggests the movement of the poet’s mind as he tries to capture the way in which the stereotypical activities of people resemble the movements of a dance.
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been reinstated into the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Incidents of violence continue to occur, such as the arson of the American Embassy in Belgrade in 2008 and outbreaks of bloodshed when the province of Kosovo seceded that same year, contributing to Simic’s outspoken opposition to war.
1980: The world political situation is tumultuous, with the Iranian Revolution and the consequent seizure of fifty-two American hostages, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, and the subsequent U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Today: America’s relationship with Iran continues to be one of hostility and mistrust; the dissolution of the Soviet Union has reduced cold war tensions and allowed new eastern European writers to gain prominence, but the world’s hot spot is still the Middle East.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT World War II One of Charles Simic’s major formative experiences was World War II. Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany on April 6, 1941, and surrendered eleven days later. Thousands of Yugoslav soldiers were taken captive, and much of the country was terrorized by a fascist militia called the Ustas˘ e. However, a strong resistance movement developed, led by two groups. One group was the Chetniks, but the most successful resistance movement was led by the Communist Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisans were able to drive the Nazis out of Simic’s native Serbia in 1944. Meanwhile, the Red Army of the Soviet Union was making its way westward, leaving Yugoslavia and other eastern and central European countries the scenes of intense fighting and bombing raids. The Simic family was often forced to evacuate their home because of bombing raids. He witnessed firsthand the devastation of the war in his hometown of Belgrade.
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Catholic nuns (Jonathan Nackstrand / Pool / Getty Images)
Post-World War II Yugoslavia As a result of his role as a leader of the Partisans and in the liberation of Yugoslavia from the Nazis, Marshall Josip Tito was an enormously popular figure in the nation. He was head of the nation’s provisional government in the years immediately after the war. The Yugoslav people, in a referendum, rejected the monarchy that had ruled the nation before the war. Tito proclaimed the nation a Communist state and ruled with an iron fist until his death in 1980. The nations of eastern and central Europe were dominated by the Soviet Union. They were Communist states in which the government controlled nearly every aspect of people’s lives, and many people lived in fear of running afoul of government authorities. Yugoslavia charted a more independent course, and relations between the nation and the Soviets were often strained. The decade after the war was one of great economic and political turmoil in Yugoslavia, which no doubt motivated the Simic family to leave in 1954 and eventually settle near Chicago. This departure from his native land occurred when Simic was fifteen years old. Most critics
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would argue that the turmoil, violence, and bloodshed that Simic witnessed both during the war and in its aftermath affected his view of the world, and therefore had a profound impact on his poetry. Further, his experience as an immigrant gave him the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life in the immigrant community, hearing their distinctive voices and observing their distinctive patterns of behavior.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Simic is generally regarded as one of America’s most talented and influential poets, as evidenced by his winning of the Pulitzer Prize in Literature and numerous other awards. Nevertheless, the critical reception of his work has sometimes been mixed. Many reviewers of Classic Ballroom Dances praised the collection in glowing terms. For example, Robert Hudzik, writing in the Library Journal, refers to Simic’s ‘‘precise surrealistic style’’ and says that his presentation ‘‘changes the way we look at the world and restores our sense of wonder.’’ A reviewer for the Washington
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Post Book World says that the poems in the collection ‘‘move with a grace of understanding and evocation and feeling reminiscent of the movement in the best of Williams’ ‘simple’ poems.’’ ‘‘Williams’’ refers to American poet William Carlos Williams, who was noted for writing poetry in simple language. Anthony Libby, writing for the New York Times Book Review, singles out the title poem in the collection as ‘‘striking’’ and ‘‘conceptually coherent.’’ Vernon Young, writing in The Hudson Review, says of Simic, ‘‘Within microcosmic verses which may be impish, sardonic, quasi-realistic or utterly outrageous, he succinctly implies an historical montage, as he does in his poem, ‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’’ Finally, a Publishers Weekly contributor praises the collection for its ‘‘carefully chosen words’’ that have ‘‘immediacy and intriguing powers of suggestion.’’ Other critics, though, were less kind. Libby, while praising the poem ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ finds that Simic’s work as a whole, up to his 1983 collection, Selected Poems, 1963–1983, is too reliant on ‘‘the customary devices of Surrealism,’’ which ‘‘are used with more cleverness than vision.’’ Even less enthusiastic about Simic’s poetry is Charles Molesworth, who writes in the New York Times Book Review that Simic is ‘‘trapped in his own style.’’ He finds the poetry ‘‘trifling and even cute,’’ undermined by ‘‘false profundity’’ and ‘‘shopworn stylizations.’’
CRITICISM Michael J. O’Neal O’Neal holds a Ph.D. in English literature. In the following essay, he conducts a line-by-line explication of Charles Simic’s ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’ ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ consists of four four-line unrhymed stanzas. The poem has no strict metrical form. It consists of a single incomplete sentence, using semicolons to link together a series of images that, together, form a gloss (an interlinear explanation, or a description inside the poem’s lines) on the poem’s title. The title itself is important, for it announces the subject matter of the poem and suggests that the people referred to in the body of the poem are engaged in daily activities that can be compared to dancing. The dances, though, are of a specific type: They are ballroom dances that are said to be
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THE POEM SAYS NOTHING ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THESE PEOPLE, THEIR FUTURES, OR THEIR MOTIVATIONS. IT SIMPLY CAPTURES THEM IN A MOMENT IN TIME DOING A CHARACTERISTIC ACTIVITY.’’
classic. Ballroom dancing, as opposed to more free-form rock and roll dancing, implies the notion of fixed, predictable steps, suggesting that the people in the poem take part in activities that are likewise fixed and predictable. Further, the dances are classic, suggesting that they have been performed over a long period of time and, as classics, they will likely continue to be performed in the future. The poem itself begins with a glancing reference to age. The opening reference is to grandmothers who engage in a startling activity: They are said to be wringing chickens’ necks. The reader pictures an elderly woman, perhaps one living on a farm, who goes out to the chicken coop to kill a chicken that will be cooked for dinner. One imagines the grandmother chasing the chicken around to catch it, as though the two were engaged in a dance. The next image, still in the first stanza, is again to elderly women, in this case, nuns, who are said to pulling the ears of schoolboys. The reader is invited to imagine a parochial school conducted by aging nuns who routinely use physical punishment as a way of disciplining unruly students, especially boys. Again, the nun and the schoolboy can be thought of as taking part in a kind of dance as the nun jerks him about in order to get him to do something. In the first stanza, the emphasis in on the person, who is then said to be doing something. In the second stanza, the grammatical structure shifts from the person to the activity itself. The first activity, the intricate steps of a pickpocket, explicitly suggests dancing; people who dance are said to execute the steps of the dance. Again, this ‘‘dancer,’’ like the two dancers in the first stanza, has a partner, in this case the crowd of curious onlookers who are so busy gawking at an accident that the pickpocket can
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
Denise Roman, who was born in Bucharest, Hungary, is the author of Maria Dracula (2003), a novel for younger readers. She adopts surrealist techniques and cites Simic as one of the authors who has influenced her. Simic gave an insightful, humorous interview to the Courtland Review in August 1998. The interview is available on the review’s Web site at http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue four/interview4.htm. Simic’s commencement speech at Bucknell University on May 18, 2008, available online at http://www.bucknell.edu/x43091.xml, provides insight into his early life and its impact on his poetry. Readers interested in ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ should read the other poems in the 1980 collection by the same name, including such poems as ‘‘Ditty’’ and ‘‘December Trees.’’ Aime´ Ce´saire is a black poet from Martinique who writes in French, but much of his work has been translated into English and can be found in a 1983 volume, Aime´ Ce´saire: The Collected Poetry, translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith. Ce´s-
easily move about and steal their belongings without their noticing. The second image of the second stanza again throws the focus onto the activity rather than the person. In this case the activity is the shuffle of an evangelist, the word shuffle suggesting the kind of dance a couple does to slow music. The person’s shuffle is said to be slow, echoing the images of aging from the first stanza. The evangelist is wearing a sandwich board, a ‘‘classic’’ form of advertising regularly used in former generations. The reader is invited to imagine such a person and the message on his sandwich board. Stereotypically, such evangelists would use their sandwich boards to urge people to repent their sins or to otherwise turn to God; alternatively, evangelical preachers would often travel from
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aire’s poetry has many characteristics of surrealist poetry.
Simic himself recommends two eastern European poets whose work is not widely known in the United States: Adam Zagajewski from Poland and Tomaz˘ S˘alamun from Slovenia. Zagajewski’s work in English includes Mysticism for Beginners (1997) and Canvas (1991). S˘alamun’s work in English includes Feast (2000), which was edited by Simic, and The Book for my Brother (2006).
Readers interested in surrealism in the visual arts can consult Fiona Bradley’s Surrealism (1997).
A wide-ranging collection of surrealist and modernist poetry and drama is collected in Laurence Rainey’s Modernism: An Anthology (2005).
Readers who would like to explore the psychological underpinnings of surrealism may consult Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Freud wrote about the relationship between the arts and psychology in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901).
town to town conducting tent revivals on the town’s outskirts, so the reader might imagine the sandwich board advertising such an event. In either case, the reference to the evangelist provides a linkage with the first stanza and its reference to nuns. The third stanza continues the pattern of stanza 2 by placing emphasis on the activity rather than the person. The first image of the stanza is that of the hesitation of a customer looking through the window grille of a pawnshop. The word peeking suggests a furtive action, as though the customer does not want anyone to notice him looking into the window; the word reinforces the customer’s hesitation. The reference to pawnshops carries a number of possible implications. Pawnshops are usually associated
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with poverty, with being down on one’s luck. People pawn goods because they have no other source of money, and people buy goods at a pawnshop generally because they believe they can get them cheaper than they could at other stores. Stolen goods are often pawned for money. Pawnshops carry an implication of seediness, of squalidness. Ultimately, the image of a hesitant customer peeking into a pawnshop window early in the morning conveys a feeling of sadness and loneliness. The stanza continues with the image of a child walking to school. The child is said to weave, again placing emphasis on the nature of the child’s movement. The child weaves because his or her eyes are closed, perhaps because of reluctance to go to school, perhaps because of fear, or perhaps because the child’s surroundings are ugly. Alternatively, perhaps the child is simply playing a game by trying to determine whether it is possible to get to school with eyes closed. The final stanza makes the poem’s first explicit reference to dancing. It begins with reference to a pair of old lovers who are dancing, cheeks touching, at a union hall. The age of the lovers provides a link to the aged grandmothers and nuns of the first stanza, and perhaps to the evangelist of stanza 2. The two lovers appear to be engaged in a ‘‘classic ballroom dance.’’ Because they are described as ancient, the reader can envision their dance as a shuffle, like that of the evangelist, or as a weave, like that of the child walking to school. The image of the union hall suggests any one of a thousand such places across the country: nondescript buildings that are used for labor union meetings but are also rented out for dances and other events. One such event might be a charity raffle. But the raffle is not seen in the poem as a source of joy and accomplishment. Rather, it takes place on Monday nights, in the rain. The reader is invited to imagine a dreary weeknight, perhaps in a small town, where people assemble, hoping to win something in the raffle. The event does not take place on the weekend, when people typically engage in fun social activities; rather, on Monday nights the raffle becomes almost an obligation, particularly because of the rain. Further, these rainy Monday nights all come in a November that is said to be eternal. The implications of November, particularly in the northern stretches of the United States, are of
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chill, gloom, and dreariness. November lacks the colorful foliage of autumn, and it lacks the charm of winter and the upcoming holiday season. November for many people is a kind of dead month that falls between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It is a month to be endured, to be gotten through. In this poem, however, November is said to be eternal. It never ends, suggesting that the people in the poem are caught in a routine dance that likewise will never end. Thus, the poem trails off on a sad note, leaving readers with an image of people caught in an endless routine—a dance of activity, none of it exciting, inspiring, or joyous. The poem says nothing about the history of these people, their futures, or their motivations. It simply captures them in a moment in time doing a characteristic activity. Source: Michael O’Neal, Critical Essay on ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Diana Engelmann In the following essay, Engelmann demonstrates how Simic’s poem ‘‘Speaking in Tongues’’ conveys the characteristic duality of exile. In his essays and interviews, Charles Simic often observes that he thinks of himself primarily as an American poet with profound roots in American literature and culture: the poetry of Whitman, Dickinson, and Roethke, in particular. And to support his case for this ‘‘American’’ lineage, he also points to his interest in contemporary American art, especially that of the New York School; his passion for jazz and blues lyrics from the 1920s and 1930s; and his research in American folklore. While it is true that the experiences of Charles Simic, the ‘‘American poet,’’ provide a uniquely cohesive force in his verse, it is also true that the voices of the foreign and of the mother tongue memory still echo in many poems: his childhood memories from Yugoslavia during World War II, before the family emigrated first to Paris and later to Chicago; his reading in European and especially in Serbian folklore and myth; his interest in the French surrealist movement and its specific echo among Serbian poets; his study of modern German and French philosophy; and also his translations of Vasko Popa’s poetics. ‘‘I had already begun to wonder,’’ Simic writes, ‘‘what kind of poems I would have written had I started writing poetry in Serbian. Are
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the differences between the two languages on the surface, or is it true what they say about language that each one paints the world in a different way?’’ (The Horse Has Six Legs). We could take Simic’s poetry as evidence that language may be permeable and that the structure of one language may shape whatever utterances occur in another. For someone writing in a second language, as Simic has done all along, a poem necessarily evolves out of more than one language and then memory. The result is a ‘‘binary vision.’’ This is what it means to be a poet speaking ‘‘in tongues’’: one negotiates languages, the new one and the ‘‘other’’ one that resonates with older memories. These ‘‘internal translations’’ obviously affect pre-verbal silence, the silence where thought begins and then is shaped. The consciousness of an exile, a poet living in a second language and the first’s residue, is not a consciousness that rests in memory or history. It is, rather, an ‘‘unrest-field,’’ to borrow Vasko Popa’s term. And each poem that surfaces from such an unrested consciousness has in it a trace of exile, whether it appears as subject or syntax or tone. A Simic poem may begin with a corner musician’s tune in New York, and then move to the street’s end where a gypsy fortuneteller whispers some odd lines resembling old Slavic proverbs, and we suddenly discover that the same street ends in a different country and in a different time. In any Simic landscape—big city, New Hampshire countryside, or the memories of Serbian villages and the war-torn streets of Belgrade—the unexpected patterns of imagery turn back to a place of origin where ‘‘the great longing of the visible / to see itself’’ occurs (Classic Ballroom Dances). In ‘‘Pastoral,’’ the speaker arrives at a field that offers peculiar portraits of words and silence: I came to a field Where the grass was silence And flowers Words I saw they were both Of flesh and blood And that they sense and fear The wind like a knife So I sat between the word obscure And the word gallows Took out my small cauldron And ladle
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Whistled to the word fire And she answered me From her sleep Spat in the palm of my hand To catch the stars Behind my back And light her way (Dismantling the Silence) The poem moves in cryptic syntax. Surrounded by silence, we experience a sudden turn from the unusual scenery of the field to the stars and the great void above. The sleeping embers of the ‘‘word fire’’ send a spark that lands in the speaker’s palm, a reminder of his continuing search for signs, for words forgotten and places long gone. Words appear as curious physical representations of their pure linguistic forms facing the speaker. In this strange field, the poet is not in a dialogue with echoes of his past and present self that emerge through the speaker’s voice; rather, the voice distances its presence, and searches for the self of language. Approaching its essence, the speaker is oddly anonymous, a self without a self—a passerby, comfortable in his self-imposed exile. ‘‘To be conscious,’’ Simic says, ‘‘is to experience distancing’’ (The Uncertain Certainty). The space between the words is the space of longing to engage in a dialogue with the unknown. Here, Simic’s path crosses Heidegger’s thought on poetizing and metaphor as possibly our only connection to the unknowable. What is inside the unsayable may reach the outside through metaphor, and in that sense poetic language permits discursive thinking to come into being. We can know or perceive any number of things only approximately, and in order to free ourselves from the illusion of knowing, we have to recognize the limitations, the errors, the silences. Just as ‘‘flowers’’ grow through ‘‘the grass,’’ ‘‘words’’ materialize through ‘‘silence.’’ The reference to ‘‘both’’ may suggest that ‘‘grass’’ and ‘‘flowers’’ in this field are made of ‘‘flesh and blood,’’ or that the same may be applied to ‘‘silence’’ and ‘‘words.’’ The uncertainty of meaning is intentional because the ‘‘field’’ of translation is unstable. Simic’s neo-surrealist image suggests a correlation between Popa’s exploration of the ‘‘unrest-field’’ underlying speech and poetry and Heidegger’s probing into the essence of language as that which resists thing-for-word interpretation. Every time that the voice in a poem crosses to the silent presence of the past, the poet reveals his exilic desire to recover the mythic
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space behind the second language and identity, where the self is still untouched by the violence of history and questions of (be)longing. In ‘‘Mother Tongue,’’ native language ‘‘travels in a bag,’’ surrounded by other necessary belongings, those few chosen for survival (Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk). This poem is one of Simic’s most concise presentations of exilic sensibility. Mother Tongue Sold by a butcher Wrapped in newspaper It travels in a bag Of the stooped widow Next to some onions and potatoes Toward a dark house Where a cat will Leap off the stove Purring At its entrance. The setting and the time depicted in the poem are not specified because the suffering and displacement of the lonely widow are too common for the twentieth century. She exists in each decade and at any location: a Warsaw ghetto to a border village somewhere in the Middle East. Each line contains at least one object essential for the poet’s return to a long-gone domestic scene: ‘‘newspaper,’’ ‘‘widow,’’ ‘‘onions and potatoes’’ ‘‘house,’’ ‘‘cat,’’ ‘‘stove,’’ ‘‘entrance.’’ The widow/mother figure has the power to turn the flesh/tongue into the substance of life again and feed the poet’s longing. A ‘‘butcher’’ wraps up the ‘‘tongue’’ in newspaper, the most common form of written language. The poet has to unfold pages, dates and years of information covered by the presence of a second language, in order to recapture the sounds and silences of his native speech, the widow’s face, the inside of ‘‘a dark house,’’ the space of forgetting. The ending word in ‘‘Mother Tongue’’ is ‘‘ entrance,’’ because the exile’s journey does not stop, and the last letter in an alphabet signals the beginning of another. Simic’s poems convey the characteristic duality of exile: they are at once authentic statements of the contemporary American sensibility and vessels of internal translation, offering a passage to what is silent and foreign. Against exile and displaced memory, the quiet voice left behind in ‘‘Explorers’’ responds, ‘‘I recognize you. You are all / That has eluded me. / May this be my country.’’
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Source: Diana Engelmann, ‘‘Speaking in Tongues: Exile and Internal Translation in the Poetry of Charles Simic,’’ in Antioch Review, Vol. 62, No. 1, Winter 2004, pp. 44–47.
Ileana A. Orlich In the following excerpt, Orlich examines Simic’s connection to the surrealists. With Classic Ballroom Dances (1980), Charles Simic consolidated his reputation as a major contemporary American poet, whose popularity has steadily increased since the publication of such earlier volumes as Dismantling the Silence (1971), Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974), Charon’s Cosmology (1977) and White (1970–80). Classic Ballroom Dances was selected as a winner of the Poetry Society of America di Castagnola Award and was reviewed in The New York Times and The Yale Review, where Helen Vendler included Simic in a ‘‘Who’s Who’’ gallery of poets worth watching. Simic’s recent books include Unending Blues (1986), The World doesn’t End (1989), and The Book of Gods and Devils (1990). In 1990 Simic received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In more senses than the casual reader of poetry could possibly imagine, Simic’s achievements from 1980 to 1990 constitute his progress toward artistic fulfillment—the poet on a roll, conscious of taking extraordinary chances, ‘‘spending for vast returns,’’ as Whitman phrased it. Simic’s early poetry was published in Kayak, George Hitchcock’s small but interesting magazine, whose surrealist experimentations appealed to many poets who, like Simic, were coming of age during and after World War II. Simic found surrealism particularly attractive because it gave him a way of rebelling against the allusive, highly academic, paradoxical poetics of modernism. Surrealism taught him how to rearrange poetic language on a simple, non-connotative basis, in simply-stated metaphors rather than in elaborate conceits, and how to rely on accessible declaratives rather than the detached, ironic use of personae which marked the work of Pound and Eliot. Simic’s acknowledgment of the surrealist tendencies in his work is expressed early in 1972 in ‘‘Where the Levels Meet: An Interview with Charles Simic.’’ Source: Ileana A. Orlich, ‘‘The Poet on a Roll: Charles Simic’s The Tomb of Ste´phane Mallarme´,’’ in Centennial Review, Vol. 36, No. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 413–28.
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SOURCES Breton, Andre´, ‘‘Manifesto of Surrealism,’’ 1924, http:// www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/Manif estoOfSurrealism.htm (accessed September 2, 2009). Hudzik, Robert, Review of Classic Ballroom Dances, in Library Journal, Vol. 105, November 1, 1980, p. 2331. Libby, Anthony, ‘‘Gloomy Runes and Loony Spoons,’’ in New York Times Book Review, January 12, 1986, p. 17. Molesworth, Charles, ‘‘Fondled Memories,’’ in New York Times Book Review, October 12, 1980, p. 36. Review of Classic Ballroom Dances, in Publishers Weekly, August 22, 1980, p. 38. Review of Classic Ballroom Dances, in Washington Post Book World, November 2, 1980, p. 11. Simic, Charles, ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances,’’ in TwentiethCentury American Poetry, edited by Dana Gioia, David Mason, and Meg Schoerke, McGraw Hill, 2004, p. 836. Young, Vernon, Review of Classic Ballroom Dances, in Hudson Review, Spring 1981, p. 150.
FURTHER READING Kolocotroni, Vassiliki, Jane Goldman, and Olga Taxidou, eds., Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, University of Chicago Press, 1999. This volume contains primary documents related to modernism in literature and the visual arts; among the topics covered is surrealism. It is
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not an anthology of literary works but rather an anthology of essays, manifestos, works of criticism, and similar documents that provided the intellectual and aesthetic underpinnings of the Modernist movement. Passeron, Rene, The Concise Encyclopedia of Surrealism, Chartwell Books, 1975. This volume provides readers with brief introductions to the artists, movements, works, and styles of surrealist artists in the twentieth century. Poplawski, Paul, Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism, Greenwood Press, 2003. The volume, written for readers in grade nine and up, contains several hundred articles on all facets of literary modernism. It includes entries on authors, disciplines, cultures and countries, theories, and movements. It thus provides a wide-ranging examination of the modernist literary culture that Charles Simic inherited. Solso, Robert L., The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain, MIT Press, 2003. This volume is for readers interested in psychology, particularly neuroscience, and the intersections between psychology and artistic perception. It helps explain how readers see a work of art, and then bring their own histories, experiences, and expectations to bear on their interpretation of the work. The emphasis is on the visual arts, but the theories are equally applicable to works of literature, particularly those written by surrealists, who emphasize the psychology of perception and the unconscious working of the mind.
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Elena PAT MORA 1984
Hispanic American poet Pat Mora, a native Texan, writes about the feelings of struggle and isolation experienced by a Mexican American woman in her poem ‘‘Elena.’’ In this free verse poem (a poem that eschews formal structures such as metrical patterns and rhyme schemes), Mora explores the barrier posed by the English language to Mexican immigrants like Elena, the narrator of the poem. English is an obstacle in Elena’s ability to understand her children, who have learned to speak English fluently, whereas the Spanish-speaking Elena has not. Mora’s descriptive poem evokes sentiments of exclusion, humiliation, and fear, and explores such feelings thematically rather than relating a story or event in a chronological fashion. Mora describes the ways in which Elena attempts to learn English, despite both her husband’s disapproval of this decision and her children’s exclusion of their mother from their conversations and laughter. In exploring Elena’s motivations to learn the language of her adoptive country, Mora demonstrates the subject’s urgent sense of need to accomplish her goal, not for her own sake, but for the sake of her children. Despite Elena’s missteps and mispronunciations, and her embarrassment regarding her shortcomings, she is depicted by Mora as a brave, loving, and persistent woman. Mora’s ‘‘Elena’’ was first published in the collection Chants, originally released in 1984. The second edition was published in 1994 by Arte Publico Press.
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Pat Mora’s work is influenced by the Rio Grande River (Image copyright Ricardo Garza, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Born in El Paso, Texas, on January 19, 1942, Mora grew up in the city of her birth and remained in El Paso through her early adulthood. At the age of twenty-one, she married William H. Burnside, Jr. The same year, in 1963, Mora received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Texas Western College. During the next several years Mora worked as a teacher while attending the University of Texas, where she received her master of arts degree in English. While Burnside and Mora were raising their three children, Mora also worked as a parttime teacher of both English and communications at El Paso Community College. She held this position from 1971 through 1978. After Burnside and Mora divorced in 1981, Mora became an assistant to the vice president of academic affairs at the University of Texas El Paso. At the same time, she judged poetry for the Texas
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Institute of Letters and additionally became director of the University Museum at the University of Texas El Paso. While at this institution, Mora also hosted a radio show at the university’s radio station from 1983 to 1984. The program concerned the Mexican American perspective on life and society. In 1984 Mora married anthropologist Vernon Lee Scarborough. After five years together in El Paso, Mora and Scarborough moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. During this year, Mora published her first volume of poetry, Chants, a collection containing the poem ‘‘Elena.’’ Mora and her husband divide their time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition to writing poetry, Mora authors children’s books with a multicultural focus. Mora has received awards as both an educator and a writer, including the Harvey L. Johnson Book Award, given by the Southwest Council of Latin American Studies, in 1984, as well as a
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Chicano/Hispanic Faculty and Professional Staff Association Award. Additionally, Mora was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1994.
POEM SUMMARY Lines 1–7 Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ does not follow any patterns in terms of formal structure and is not divided into stanzas (a stanza is a unit of poetry, or a grouping of lines that divides the poem in the same way that a paragraph divides prose). There are, however, lines that are linked in terms of the subject matter they treat. The poem opens with the narrator of the poem declaring that her native language, Spanish, is insufficient. In the next six lines, Elena recalls her life in Mexico with her children. She remembers listening to her young children and smiling at what they would say. During their time in Mexico, Elena observes, she was able to understand everything her children said. She was empowered by their common language to laugh at the jokes the children told, to delight in the songs they sang. Nothing, not even their secretive childhood plans, was unknown to her. Elena recalls overhearing them plotting to get something from her. In Spanish, she recalls the children convincing each other to ask her for candy. This section of the poem ends abruptly with Elena stating, as emphatically as she asserts in the first line that her Spanish is not enough, that her memories of this special connection with her children through the bond of their language occurred in Mexico, in the past.
Lines 8–11 The tone of ‘‘Elena’’ shifts at the beginning of the eighth line of the poem. Things are different, Elena observes, now that her children are older and enrolled in American schools. Now the children are teenagers who speak fluent English. Elena reveals that the children sit at the table, laughing together, while she stands apart, feeling isolated, unable to understand what they are saying, unable to speak with them in English. Mora’s word choice in these lines suggest that Elena feels both incapable of speech and not smart enough to learn what her children have learned. The narrator’s shame and embarrassment become as apparent as her sense of exclusion.
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Lines 12–20 In the next lines of ‘‘Elena,’’ the poet explores Elena’s efforts to learn English. Elena reveals that she has bought a book in order to help her learn to speak English. Her husband appears both disapproving and somewhat disinterested. When Elena shows him her book, he frowns and continues to drink his beer. Elena informs the reader that her oldest child attempts to comfort Elena by telling her that the husband does not wish for Elena to become smarter than he is by learning English. Despite this sympathy, Elena admits that at forty, learning the language is challenging. She discusses her embarrassment at not being able to pronounce words properly, and feels that everyone—her children, the grocery store owner, the letter carrier—is laughing at her. Elena confides that she takes her English book into the bathroom with her, where she can practice in private, saying the words that are so strange and difficult for her to enunciate.
Lines 21–22 The final two lines of the poem are succinct expressions of the narrator’s fears. Elena insists that she must persist in her efforts, because if she does not keep trying to learn the language her children now speak with ease, she will not be able to hear them when they need her. Much is contained in these two short lines. Mora chooses to express Elena’s inability to understand her children’s English conversations as deafness. Clearly the family can still speak to one another in Spanish, and so Elena is not truly deaf to her children’s needs. Nevertheless, if the children elect to hide something from her, they only need to speak in English. Elena is keenly aware of the fact that being able to comprehend the everyday conversations of her children will enable her to understand their lives and give her the power to advise and guide them, whether or not they directly express a need or ask for help.
THEMES Language and Languages Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is concerned with the narrator’s native language of Spanish and the English language of her adoptive country, the United States. For Elena, these two languages are symbolic of the conflict between the familiarity of her
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is focused on a family who has emigrated from Mexico to the United States. Using both print and online resources, research how Mexican citizens become United States citizens. How is legal status attained? Are there immigration quotas (that is, are only certain numbers of people allowed to become U.S. citizens)? What criteria must be met in order to be allowed legal immigrant status? Create a written report, a Power Point presentation, or a Web page in which you discuss your findings. Be sure to cite all of your sources.
The history and culture of Mexican Americans is a primary focus in much of Mora’s writing. Research Mexican American culture and traditions. Are certain types of traditional foods a part of this culture? What holidays are celebrated? Are certain foods eaten only on special occasions? What type of music is unique to Mexican American culture? Are there religious ceremonies or celebrations particular to this group? What are the subjects and themes of the art and literature of Mexican Americans? Create a presentation for your class on Mexican American culture in which you consider some of these questions. Bring examples of the music, food, artwork, or other items for your class to view or sample.
The young-adult novel White Bread Competition by Jo Ann Yolanda Herna´ndez, published by Pinata Books in 1997, tells the story of a fourteen-year old Mexican American girl, and the challenges she faces as a member of a minority in her school. The book offers readers of Mora’s ‘‘Elena’’ a glimpse of what life might have been like for Elena’s children, who are, like the characters in Hernandez’s book, teenagers of Mexican descent attending an American school. Read Hernandez’s novel, studying the work for ways in which the characters’ bilingualism causes conflict at home or in school. Write an essay in which you use both Mora’s poem and Hernandez’s novel to discuss the ways in which you think speaking both English and Spanish affects the lives of teenage Hispanic American children. What might be the benefits of this bilingualism? How might the ability to speak two languages be perceived as a drawback?
native land and the challenges posed by relocating to a new country. The Spanish language for Elena is comfortable and familiar, the language in which she recalls the early years of her children’s
lives. It is the language of memory for her. Power over the English language is something Elena’s children, now in high school, have achieved. Elena’s inability to master the new language is a
Mora has written a number of children’s picture books, including The Rainbow Tulip (1999), Pablo’s Tree (1994), and The Desert is My Mother (1994). Select two or three of Mora’s short children’s books (choose from those listed here or from others you find in the course of your own research). Read the books and compare them to the poems in the collection that contains ‘‘Elena’’ (Chants). The picture books are written for a young audience and the poems are targeted at adults. Despite the differences in the target audience, can you identify similar themes? Does Mora use similar language or imagery to convey those themes? Write a comparative essay in which you discuss Mora’s themes, language, style, and imagery, in these different formats. Use examples and quotations from the works to clarify your analysis as needed.
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source of shame, embarrassment, frustration, and fear. Elena can no longer comprehend everything her children say to one another, and she is left out of their jokes. She is uncomfortable with being unable to understand her children’s recounting of the day’s events. Elena feels excluded because she cannot participate in conversations with her children. Furthermore, the fact that her children have mastered the English language demonstrates the level at which Elena perceives them to be assimilated into their new country. The negative feelings Mora attributes to Elena convey the narrator’s sense of being left behind by her children, who have, through the learning of the English language, become something that she is not; they are truly Americans. Excluded as she is from this transition from immigrant to American, Elena persists in her struggle to learn English. She finds the words difficult to say and is embarrassed when people laugh at her efforts. As frustrated and ashamed as Elena feels, she also understands the power the English language holds for her. Without this mastery, she fears that she will be unable to help her children when they need her. The English language represents Elena’s future, while Spanish is the language of her past. Elena struggles to find a way to employ both languages successfully in the present.
Hispanic woman (Image copyright Elena Ray, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Isolation
connection is diminished. Elena fears that this connection may be lost completely.
The narrator’s sense of isolation in the poem ‘‘Elena’’ is a palpable thing, conveyed through Mora’s imagery and word choice. The source of Elena’s isolation is the English language, as it is spoken fluently by her children but remains a mystery to Elena. From the beginning of the poem, Mora demonstrates the narrator’s sense of insufficiency and the feelings of exclusion generated by her inability to master the English language. Her own language, Spanish, is described as not being enough any longer. Before describing Elena’s current troubles, Mora depicts a past in which the relationship between Elena and her children is whole, characterized by mutual understanding. Set against this backdrop, Elena’s present state of isolation is more clearly understood. Her sense of exclusion is heightened by her knowledge that in the past, her relationship with her children was one in which she felt connected to them. Now, with the children speaking English and her inability to understand their conversations, that feeling of
Mora describes a scene in which the children are seated at the kitchen table, laughing together, while Elena is alone, standing next to the stove, feeling mute and foolish. Elena’s physical separation from her children in this image underscores her emotional sense of separation from them. Her isolation intensifies when, as she tries to learn English, her husband frowns upon her efforts, and people, her children included, laugh at the way she mispronounces the English words she struggles so hard to learn. Mora further demonstrates Elena’s sense of exclusion when Elena describes how she locks herself away in the bathroom in order to practice her English without a jeering audience. At the end of the poem, Elena’s isolation is demonstrated to be a source of intense anxiety for her, as she reveals her fears of not being able to help her children in times of trouble. Without the power of the English language, Elena is set apart from her children, unable to share in the joy and pain of life with them.
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STYLE Free Verse Mora’s ‘‘Elena’’ is a free verse poem. A free verse poem is one in which there is no set structure, rhyme scheme, or the rhythmical pattern known as meter (the pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in formal verse). The poem consists of twenty-two lines that are not divided into stanzas (stanzas are groupings of lines in a poem that divide the poem into sections the way paragraphs divide prose). By writing in free verse, Mora is able to create a poem exploring themes of isolation and the power of language without being fettered to a structure that forces the poem to progress in a formal, linear pattern. Mora moves from the narrator’s present thoughts to memories of her past, then back again to the present and the narrator’s reflections on her current situation, and finally on to the narrator’s expectations regarding her future. The open format of free verse allows the organic development of the poet’s themes and the opportunity to develop the character of the narrator.
Persona Poem As Pat Mora discusses in an interview with Hector A. Torres in the 2007 Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers, ‘‘Elena’’ is what is known as a persona poem. In a persona poem, the poet creates a character and writes in that character’s voice from a firstperson point of view (in which the character refers to him or herself using ‘‘I’’). Mora explains that in writing a persona poem, she is able as a poet to delve into the life experiences of individuals quite unlike herself. By using the firstperson point of view, Mora creates an intimate portrait of a mother plagued by self-doubt and worry. Not only does Mora use the first person in order to provide a glimpse into Elena’s thoughts, she also, in the short span of the poem, gives her character a past, a conflict-laden present existence, and a dream for the future. The personal history Mora ascribes to Elena is one lived in Mexico. While the poet does not reveal why the family left their native land, Elena’s memory of her home seems pleasant. The current turmoil Elena experiences in the poem is her sense of being excluded from the lives of her Englishspeaking children. Driven by the need to be able to participate fully in their lives, Elena struggles to learn English. Mora also reveals that Elena hopes that learning the English language will
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enable her to be a guiding force in her children’s life in the future. Throughout the poem, Elena speaks for herself, in the first person, conveying her fond memories of her children’s youth, the current shame she feels, and her hopes and fears. In creating the persona of Elena, Mora strives to present a fully rounded character with a voice of her own.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Mexico and the United States in the 1980s Mora published her poem ‘‘Elena’’ in 1984. During the 1980s, the Mexico that Mora and other Americans observed was a country in transition. Plagued by corruption, abuse of power, and subsequent revolution, the Mexican government began tentatively to regain its footing with the 1982 election of President Miguel de la Madrid. Attempting to remove the heavy influence of the government from Mexico’s economy, de la Madrid faced an uphill battle, as Mexico was entering a severe economic recession when he took office. During his presidency, Mexico City was struck by a major earthquake in September 1985. De la Madrid was heavily criticized for the government’s sluggish response in rescuing victims and aiding survivors. By the end of his presidency in 1988, de la Madrid was only marginally successful in instituting changes his country’s economy. De la Madrid’s presidency overlapped with the presidency of American President Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989. Over the years, the two presidents met on several occasions, and the relationship between them and between the two countries was characterized by both political clashes and compromises. In a 1983 meeting between Reagan and de la Madrid, the leaders discussed their mutual efforts to control the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico to the United States, the environmental issues concerning land along the border between the two countries, mutual trade, economic assistance provided by the United States to aid the development of Mexico’s agricultural systems, and the political turmoil in Central American countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama. This final topic was perhaps the issue about which the two countries disagreed most. Despite the talk of cooperation in 1983, in 1988 President de la Madrid spoke
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1980s: According to U.S. Census Bureau data, over 600,000 people born in Mexico became naturalized United States citizens during the 1980s. (The term naturalized refers to a foreign-born individual being granted legal citizenship.) Today: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that from 1990 to 2000, just over 300,000 people born in Mexico became naturalized United States citizens. Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Mexican workers are allowed temporary stays in the United States for seasonal work, making it easier for Mexican citizens to work in the United States and then return home to Mexico, emigrating legally or illegally, and without becoming U.S. citizens. 1980s: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that, as of the 1980 Census, there are 4.9 million foreign-born individuals in the United States who speak Spanish in the home. Forty-three percent of these were born in Mexico. This translates to roughly two million people in the United States who were born in Mexico and who speak Spanish in the home. Today: According to the 2000 Census, roughly 8.5 million Mexican-born individuals living in the United States speak Spanish in the home.
out against the interference of the U.S. government in Panamanian affairs. The issue of drug trafficking would also continue to be a source of conflict between the two nations. In 1988, at another meeting between the presidents, de la Madrid defended his nation’s effort to curb drug production but criticized the United States for failing to diminish the demand for the illegal substances. A further issue between the nations during the 1980s was that of immigration of Mexican residents to the United States. In 1986, the
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1980s: Despite successful bilingual educational programs, which teach native-Spanish speaking children subject areas such as math and science in Spanish, criticism of bilingual programs increases in the 1980s as a parallel movement to make the English language the official language of the United States takes hold. Today: Studies in the 1990s and 2000s make the case for continued expansion of bilingual education programs in American schools. Such studies cite, for example, the increased ability to learn a third language by bilingual education students. Other research explores ways of enhancing bilingual programs through increasing knowledge of the students’ cultural communities.
1980s: Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid and U.S. President Ronald Reagan meet on several occasions throughout the 1980s to discuss border issues, drug trafficking, environmental issues, and the political conflicts in Central American countries. Today: Mexican President Felipe Caldero´n and U.S. President Barack Obama meet in Mexico City in April 2009 to discuss drug and weapon trafficking between the two countries.
Immigration Reform and Control Act provided legal citizenship to illegal immigrants who lived in the United States as of 1982. In addition to this act, according to George J. Borjas in an introduction to the 2007 Mexican Immigration to the United States, border enforcement was enhanced, and employers faced increased fines for employing illegal immigrants. Nevertheless, illegal immigration continued to be prevalent. Borjas cites the sharp decline in income among Mexican citizens during the 1980s as a factor contributing to this increase in immigration.
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‘‘Communication’’ in a dictionary (Image copyright Mark Poprocki, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Hispanic American Poetry in the 1980s During the late 1960s and throughout much of the 1970s, the Chicano literary renaissance (a profusion of literary production by Hispanic American authors) paralleled the Chicano Movement, a civil rights movement focused on identifying and eliminating discrimination against Hispanic Americans. The Hispanic American poetry of the 1980s is built on the foundation of the earlier renaissance. The poetry of the 1980s written by Hispanic American poets is diverse, but it typically reflects a strong sense of cultural identity and often treats themes related to politics, religion, and family. Additionally, as Virgil Suarez observes in his 2000 article on Hispanic literature for U.S. Society & Values, Hispanic American authors are connected by their shared experience of bilingualism. Being able to think in two languages creates unique challenges for expression, Suarez explains. He goes on to discuss the way many Hispanic American writers incorporate the Spanish language into their works (written in English).
Ikas, in her preface to her interview with Mora in Chicana Ways: Conversations with Ten Chicana Writers, published in 2002, observes that Mora’s writing is largely focused on ‘‘the Mexican and Mexican American cultures and their conservation.’’ In Bruce Allen Dick’s 2003 collection of interviews, A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets, Dick regards Mora as ‘‘one of the best-known Latina writers in the United States.’’ During the interview, when Dick asks Mora about her first collection of poetry, Chants, the collection containing ‘‘Elena,’’ Mora describes the work as ‘‘the beginning, on paper, for me to express my fascination with my Mexican heritage.’’ Hector A. Torres writes about and interviews Mora in his Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers, published in 2007. Torres introduces his interview with Mora by discussing the themes prevalent in her poetry, and by observing the way Mora appears comfortable with her bilingualism, her ability to speak both Spanish and English fluently. In discussing Mora’s collection Chants, Torres draws attention to Mora’s examination of the lives and experiences of Mexican and Mexican American women, stating that Mora’s poetry ‘‘traces a path of identification between indigenous Mexican women and the experiences of modernity characterizing contemporary Chicanas.’’ Additionally, Torres comments specifically on the poem ‘‘Elena,’’ noting that the poem connects the title character’s desire to learn English with economic issues, and also that Elena’s goal ‘‘hints at Mora’s pursuit of her own calling to write and make a differences in the lives of other women, Mexicanas and Chicanas alike.’’
CRITICISM Catherine Dominic CRITICAL OVERVIEW While there is no extensive criticism on Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena,’’ several critics discuss her work in general in introductions to interviews with the poet. The critics focus on Mora’s interest in Mexican and Mexican American culture and heritage as a driving force in her writing. The passion she bears for this topic is readily apparent in ‘‘Elena’’ in its exploration of the frustrations of a Mexican immigrant learning to speak English. Karin Rosa
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Dominic is a novelist and freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she demonstrates the way in which language functions in the poem ‘‘Elena’’ as a symptom of the larger conflicts Elena experiences in her relationship with her children. Pat Mora’s poem ‘‘Elena’’ is a work in which the narrator expresses her sense of isolation from her children. Elena pinpoints language as the source of this growing divide, faulting her Spanish as insufficient, and demonstrating the problems in understanding that the English language
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
House of Houses, by Pat Mora, was originally published in 1997 and is available in a 2008 edition published by the University of Arizona Press. The work is Mora’s memoir, but it is not written in a traditional memoir form. In lyrical prose, Mora gathers all her family members, living and dead, together in one room to talk. The memoir goes on to explore one year in the life of Mora’s family. Pat Mora (Who Wrote That?) by Hal Marcovitz is a biography of Mora geared at a young-adult audience. The book was published by Chelsea House Publishers in 2008 and is part of their larger ‘‘Who Wrote That’’ series of biographies. Marcovitz discusses, among other topics, Mora’s youth, her early interest in writing, and her sense of belonging to two cultures, that of Mexico and that of Texas. Parrot in the Oven, by Victor Martinez, won the 1996 National Book Award for Young People’s Fiction. The novel, available through Rayo in a 2004 paperback version, is the coming-of-age story of a Mexican American teenage boy. Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States, edited by Lori Carlson, is a collection of poems written in Spanish and in English translation. Some
generates in her household. Her children speak English well; she does not. Yet underlying the overt conflicts created for the narrator by language is another, more subtle reason for the isolation Elena feels. The poet hints at transitions in Elena’s household, transitions that are not confined to the homes of Mexican immigrant families. Elena’s children are not only being transformed by their conversion from Spanish speakers to English speakers and by their assimilation to life in America. Elena’s children are also growing up. Mora contrasts Elena’s memories of
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poems utilize both languages; a glossary of Spanish words and terms makes the collection accessible to English-speaking readers. Published by Fawcett in 1995, the collection features the works of well-known and lesser-known poets and treats complex and emotional themes such as the frustrations of being an immigrant, fitting in, and dealing with discrimination, as well as poems simply exploring the ups and downs of everyday life.
Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, edited by Rube´n G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes, and published by the University of California Press in 2001, is a collection of essays by scholars of immigration studies. The essays focus on the ways in which the children of immigrants from all over the world deal with the process of becoming American.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, by Sandra Cisneros, is a collection of short fiction about Mexican American women living in Texas in which Cisneros treats themes similar to those explored by Mora: a sense of identification with two cultures, family life, and feelings of isolation. The work was published by Vintage in 1992.
her children’s youth in Mexico with their teenage life in America; while the contrasts between Mexico and America, between Spanish and English, dominate the poem, the contrast between Elena’s children as youngsters and as teenagers is also a central feature of the poem. In the poem’s opening lines, Mora has her narrator Elena recall life in Mexico with her young children. Elena speaks of being able to understand her children, understand their jokes and songs, and their secret conspiring with one another. Yet one may read these lines as imbued
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THE POET HINTS AT TRANSITIONS IN ELENA’S HOUSEHOLD, TRANSITIONS THAT ARE NOT CONFINED TO THE HOMES OF MEXICAN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES. ELENA’S CHILDREN ARE NOT ONLY BEING TRANSFORMED BY THEIR CONVERSION FROM SPANISH SPEAKERS TO ENGLISH SPEAKERS AND BY THEIR ASSIMILATION TO LIFE IN AMERICA. ELENA’S CHILDREN ARE ALSO GROWING UP.’’
with another meaning as well. Not only did Elena understand her children’s language when they were young, when they all spoke Spanish with one another, but she was able to understand her children as people. As a mother of youngsters she comprehended the straightforward needs and desires of her children. They wanted to laugh, play, sing, and enjoy some occasional sweets. The lives of the children and the interactions between the children and their mother were uncomplicated when the children were younger. Elena’s fondness for this time is captured by Mora through the image of Elena smiling as she listens to her children, and by the affectionate references made about the children in this early part of the poem. Now, however, Elena finds her home occupied by two American teenagers. There are no sweet references here; the children are no longer little. She speaks of feeling excluded from conversations her children have with one another in English. The imagery of the poem sets her physically apart from the children, underscoring Elena’s sense of separation: the children are seated at the kitchen table, and Elena stands by herself, at the stove. While Elena’s isolation is intensified by the language differences between herself and her children, one can easily imagine this scene playing out in any American home. The teenagers are speaking to one another in what appears to the listening parent as code. The teens may be using slang terms, or text messaging terms, or they might even be texting one another, laughing at jokes the onlooking mother cannot understand. Whereas earlier in the poem
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Elena spoke of being able to understand everything her young children said, suggesting that she truly understood everything about them, now that they are older, Elena feels as if she cannot comprehend her children at all. Her sense of being disconnected from her children is acutely painful. Mora puts very negative words in Elena’s mouth; she speaks of feeling stupid, unable to communicate. Her efforts at learning to speak English generate feelings of embarrassment and shame. If one considers the fact that the children, whose first language is Spanish, are still able to speak Spanish, then the issue of Elena’s isolation becomes more apparent, and the intensity of her feelings is more easily understood. Elena and her children are still able to communicate with one another. The children could easily speak Spanish with their mother and in their mother’s company. Yet the teenage children choose to make themselves unavailable to their mother by speaking in English instead. It is the fact of this choice that is at least as significant as the language issues at work in the poem. Elena’s children, by choosing, like many other teenagers, not to communicate with their mother, by opting to communicate with each other in a way their mother cannot understand, choose to exclude her. The fact that Elena’s children make this very deliberate choice is a major part of the sense of isolation that Elena feels. The main conflict in the poem is not simply an internal one within Elena; it is not simply that she cannot understand her children. A major conflict exists between Elena and her children, apart from the conflict Elena has with the English language. Elena’s children voluntarily choose not to be understood by their mother. They elect to isolate her. While they attempt to console her when their father disapproves of Elena’s efforts to learn English, the children nevertheless intensify their mother’s feelings of exclusion by laughing at her when she mispronounces words. Mora skillfully underscores Elena’s distance from her children when they are listed along with the grocer and the mailman—familiar strangers—as individuals whose laughter makes her feel embarrassed. One must not omit from this discussion another cause for Elena’s sense of isolation: her husband. Not only does he apparently disapprove of her efforts to learn English, but he also does not seem to be involved in either the life of his wife or the lives of his children. Elena
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makes no reference to her husband in her reflections on the past in Mexico, when the children were young. Nor does she seem likely to turn to him for support as a parent of teenage children. They do not present a united front in coping with the changes their children are undergoing. Elena stands alone while the husband drinks his beer. The fear Elena reveals in the poem’s last lines is that her children will need help that she will be unable to provide if she does not keep trying. Presumably, Elena is referring to her efforts to learn English, but this is not stated directly. Her desire is to remain a significant presence in the life of her children, to be the person they turn to when help is needed. The husband is notably absent from these lines as well. Elena does not see herself as part of a parenting team, but knows that she, unlike her husband, must not withdraw from her children’s lives simply because they have grown older, because they have changed. She insists on trying, despite her fears and embarrassment, despite the fact that her children have made choices to purposefully keep her separated from them. Elena nevertheless endeavors to remain present, to attempt to keep understanding her children. She claims not to want to be deaf to their needs. While her desire to learn English to be able to communicate with them, to hear them in the language in which they choose to speak is an obvious component of her effort to remain a significant part of her children’s lives, Elena seeks on a larger scale to remain emotionally connected with her children. Elena must not only overcome the barrier of language, but also the emotional barriers her children have erected in order to keep their mother separate, apart from them. One final component attributing to Elena’s sense of isolation, a factor also related to the issue of language, can be inferred from the poem. Elena does not reveal what has brought her family from Mexico to the United States. Whatever the reasons though, the family is now settled, the children are enrolled in an American high school where they have learned English. From the fact that the children are sitting together in the kitchen, talking and laughing, one can assume that they are relatively happy. Elena has provided opportunities for her children that she apparently did not have; she has given them an American education and the chance to learn English. However, by giving
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her children such opportunities, Elena has been instrumental in the children’s transformation into people who are very different from herself. By exploring this transformation, Mora highlights the irony of parenting. As any mother would, Elena strives to make her children’s lives better than her own. In doing so, she isolates herself from them, simply by providing them with the opportunities for experiences she never had. Mora’s poem, then, touches on universal themes, despite the specific experiences discussed in ‘‘Elena.’’ Within the context of the language conflicts of an immigrant family, Mora examines the isolation a mother creates between herself and her children, and the deliberate exclusion of a mother by her children. Source: Catherine Dominic, Critical Essay on ‘‘Elena,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Diana Huber In the following interview, Huber speaks with Mora about the importance of reading in general and poetry in particular to young readers. Bilingual writer Pat Mora is this year’s featured writer for the fifth annual Lacey Loves to Read community-wide literacy initiative. The community is invited to read books by Mora, who will lead writing workshops and speak at a free reception during her Feb. 27–28 visit. Mora has written more than 30 awardwinning children’s books that incorporate both English and Spanish. She also has several volumes of poetry for young adults and adults, as well as a memoir that chronicles her experiences of growing up on the Texas-Mexico border. Mora’s upcoming book as a collection of food haiku titled Yum! ¡Mmm! ¡Que rico!. She also is working on a compilation of poetry for teenagers. Mora also is the founder of the family literacy initiative El dia de los ninos / El dia de los libros— Children’s Day / Book Day—now housed at the American Library Association. The yearlong commitment of linking all children to books, languages and cultures culminates in celebrations across the country April 30. She lives in Santa Fe and has three grown children. Here, Mora tells The Olympian about what inspires her writing and why poetry and reading are so important for today’s youth.
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You decided to become a writer after a career in education and as a university administrator. What prompted this transition? Growing up, I never saw a writer who was like me. I didn’t see a writer who was bilingual. I think young people aspire to be what they see is possible. I was always a reader, thanks to my mom. . . . The dream of being a writer came later to me, because I had to work through that notion that it was possible for someone like me to become a writer. . . . I want young people to understand we often get better at the things we spend a lot of time on. If they spend a lot of time reading and writing, they probably will be better at both, too. You incorporate Spanish words into many of your stories and poems. Did you intend to write bilingual works from the start? I grew up in a bilingual home and feel so fortunate. . . . It’s hard to imagine not using both. The comparison I use is the black and white keys on the piano. If you play the piano, you don’t want to pass up the black keys. . . . I want to have that music that I think is part of another language. Where do you get your inspiration? Writers are nosy, so we listen and eavesdrop a lot. I’m always looking for a good story. I travel a lot; that gives me the advantage of listening to teachers, librarians and students. Why is poetry important for young people? We tend to think something is important when we love it. I love poetry; it is my favorite genre. I love to read it, I love to write it, I love to share it. On a practical level, I think poetry improves everybody’s writing. Poetry demands we delete extra words, and we struggle to find the most vivid example. . . . I think poetry speaks to us in an interior way. Ideally poetry brings us back in touch with ourselves . . . not the self that’s constantly under stress, but the deeper self. In that way poetry can be incredibly refreshing. Is poetry going out of style in an age of Internet, MP3 players and video games? I fear it. My optimistic side wants to believe that books have a particular power that is a magnet to people. But perhaps the more realistic side is that books require quiet time, and if we
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TO BRIDGE THE BORDERS, YOU NEED THE RIGHT COYOTE TO HELP YOU ACROSS. MORA’S COYOTES OR MEDIATORS ARE A STRONG, FEMALEIDENTIFIED CULTURE AND A BELIEF IN THOSE ASPECTS OF CULTURAL CONSERVATION THAT AFFIRM THE SELF.’’
don’t foster that in our homes and in our schools, it’s not a habit that will be easily cultivated, because distractions pull young people away. What are the challenges of being a Latina writer? They are many. It’s going to be uphill all the way for my generation. Only about 2 percent of children’s books published in a year are by or about Latinos, even though Latinos are about 14 percent of the population. . . . It’s so important that we change our definition of what American literature is to reflect the rich diversity of this country. . . . We want books that make all kinds of children feel at home. Source: Diana Huber, ‘‘Writer Pat Mora Encourages Literacy in Two Languages,’’ in the Olympian, February 10, 2008.
Linda C. Fox In the following review, Fox examines the importance of borders, river cities, and heritage in Mora’s poetry. During a visit to the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in January of 1994 to read from her poetry, Chicana writer Pat Mora remarked that she had grown increasingly aware of the powerful role of water and borders in her life (Mora 1994). At that time Mora was living in Cincinnati, where she had moved in 1989 after many years of residence in El Paso, Texas, one of the principal border towns between the United States and Mexico, with the Rio Grande providing the dividing line. Yet Mora sees Cincinnati as a border city as well, with its river—the Ohio River—serving as separation of the North from the South and its history of crossings from slavery to what was thought to be freedom.
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Borders and river cities, then, are paramount in Mora’s life experience. This observation will come as no surprise to the reader of her first collection of poetry, Chants (Mora 1984), where the imagery of the Texas / Mexico border expresses poignantly the division that Mora feels exists not only between the woman on the other side of the river and herself, but also between parts of her own identity at odds with one another. The burdensome perception by others of her as a cultural misfit, ‘‘an American to Mexicans / a Mexican to Americans / a handy token / sliding back and forth / between the fringes of both worlds, / by smiling / by masking the discomfort / of being prejudged / bilaterally,’’ weighs heavily upon Mora as a writer at the border, both geographically and psychologically. Borders can be barriers difficult to overcome, for, as Mora says, ‘‘prejudice is in the very air we breathe’’ (Mora 1992). Yet it is precisely the tension of this split or pull that leads Mora to forge in time a positive image of who she is. In her first book of essays, Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle, Mora reflects often on her world as a border dweller who negotiates constantly the border between the United States and Mexico, between European-American culture and her own Chicana culture. She states: ‘‘There probably isn’t a week of my life that I don’t have at least one experience where I feel that discomfort, the slight frown from someone that wordlessly asks, what is someone like her doing here? But I am in the middle of my life, and well know not only the pain but also the advantage of observing both sides, albeit with my biases, of moving through two, and in fact, multiple spaces, and selecting from both what I want to make part of me, of consciously shaping my space’’ (Mora 1993, 6). Mora thus emphasizes that the survival skills that she had to learn as a border resident and ‘‘translator’’ of cultures are accompanied by a creative force that frees her to forge a richer, stronger, more integrated selfidentity through the choices she makes. Mora’s position as a border dweller has also influenced her poetics. As Leobardo Saravia Quiroz says in his essay ‘‘Cultural and Literary Writing on the Border,’’ she is among those writers who ‘‘are reclaiming a vision of the border as an internal point of reference for them as individuals and also as writers, though not necessarily the geographical point written about’’ (Saravia 1989, 66). Mora does begin with
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geography in Chants, but goes well beyond the physical border of the Southwest to portray the socioeconomic, racial, and cultural separations that exist there. For Mora, the Chicana poet compares to the curandera, an indigenous, gentle healer, who learns her craft informally and lives within a strong oral-storytelling culture. Mora recognizes that, like the curandera, she has learned most of her art from hearing and reading others, and she is dedicated to ‘‘saving the stories’’ of her Mexican culture so that the world will appreciate the often unnoticed and devalued aspects of her heritage (Mora 1992). She asks, ‘‘How can I be a child of the border and not know with Audre Lorde that in this country ‘oppression is as American as apple pie’?’’ (Mora 1993, 34). A believer in ‘‘cultural conservation,’’ a term borrowed from ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, Mora in her poetry documents, validates, and dignifies her Mexican heritage, a heritage that she ignored as a young woman until one day she awakened to the treasures it held: ‘‘Mexico was like a beautiful chest of smooth, dark wood that my mother had in her bedroom,’’ but that was passed by and over until Mora was able to value what it held for her (41). Mora’s feminist beliefs impact her poetics as well. In an interview with Norma Alarcon in 1986, Mora makes clear her bond with women of the past and her hope for those who represent the future: ‘‘I am a feminist and totally comfortable with the term. Though I would respect and fight for women’s right to choose their political stance in this world, I sometimes have trouble understanding how women cannot see the need for banding together, for some speaking out, for more equity in this world. We have a lot to offer and I feel that I walk on the bones of talented women who were never heard. I am uncomfortable with that and I want change’’ (Alarcon 1986, 124). Although in the same interview Mora is ambivalent about viewing her writing as feminist, since she wants no message decided on ahead of time as she begins a poem, her focus is on the women who border her, whether they are real (her daughters, her Tia Lobo, her mother, and her mamande) or metaphoric (the desert, ‘‘mi madre’’). A constant in all three volumes of Mora’s poetry, these female figures help her negotiate between the past and the future, and they provide her with lessons in survival and hope, from either side of the geographical or generational border.
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Mora recognizes that oppressive traditions need to be rejected, whether they originate in Mexican or Anglo culture. The challenge for Mora is to construct a cultural and feminist identity while straddling what Alvina Quintana calls ‘‘two opposing realities that fail to acknowledge her’’ (Quintana 1991, 76). Gloria Anzaldua, in her now classic Borderlands / La Frontera, expresses the need to reject the culturally transmitted paradigms that are harmful to Mexican women while retaining the positive contributions to her selfidentity: ‘‘Ya no solo [sic] paso toda mi vida botando las costumbres y los valores de mi cultura que me traicionan. Tambien recojo las costumbres que por el tiempo se ran provado [sic] y las costumbres de respeto alas mujeres’’ (Anzaldua 1987, 15). Anzaldua rejects all imposition of personality on her and fights for the Nahuatl concept of ‘‘the freedom to carve and chisel my own face’’ (22). Mora’s words echo Anzaldua’s thoughts: ‘‘Much as I want us, my daughters, my niece, Chicanas of all ages, to carry the positive aspects of our culture with them for sustenance, I also want us to question and ponder what values and customs we wish to incorporate into our own lives, to continue our individual and collective evolution’’ (Mora 1993, 53). However, although Mora recognizes along with Anzaldua that such a creature in transition is vulnerable and that there are cures that sting, the psychic unrest that Anzaldua confesses is not characteristic for Mora: ‘‘To transform our traditions wisely, we need to know them, be inspired and saddened by them, choose for ourselves what to retain. But we can prize the past together, valuing the positive female and Mexican traditions. We can prize elements of the past as we persist in demanding, and creating, change’’ (56). Both lived reality and metaphoric construct, Nepantla—and its concomitant image of borders—remains central to Mora’s work. Her growing world view gained from travel to other lands and the encounter with other cultures reveals to her borders of many kinds, as an examination of selected poems from the three collections will show. In Chants, some borders are more permeable than others. ‘‘The ability to see both sides of the border,’’ as described by Emily Hicks (1991, xxiii), can be seen in Mora’s much studied poems dealing with the desert Southwest, where the poetic speaker, a modern ‘‘assimilated’’ Chicana writer, values and is a part of the rituals and traditions that affirm female creativity, strength, and endurance. ‘‘Bribe,’’ the initial poem of
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Chants, describes the female connectedness the modern writer feels when, in the search for inspiration, she reenacts the ancient Indian ritual of an offering to the desert. Her ballpoint pen and lined yellowing paper are like the turquoise the Indian women bury as they chant: ‘‘Guide my hands, Mother, / to weave singing birds / flowers rocking in the wind, to trap / them on my cloth with a web of thin threads’’ (Mora 1984). Kristina Passman points out in her study ‘‘Demeter, Kore, and the Birth of the Self’’ that in Mora’s work ‘‘the desert world is a place of safety for women, where the worlds of nature and of women are integrated’’ (Passman 1990, 331). Mother, teacher, and worker of magic, the desert and the females who dwell there serve as a bridge from one generation to another, a border easily traversed. The gentle healing skills of the curandera and of the woman in ‘‘Abuelita Magic’’ who soothes the tears and the cries of her daughter and grandchild with the desert rhythms of a dried chile pod provide an interconnectedness of female nurturance. The abuelita in ‘‘Family Ties’’ who rewards her granddaughter with the pragmatics of white uniforms, not the frills of a hair ornament, and the aging but feisty tia who still savors a full meal at Denny’s (‘‘Pushing 100’’) and a moment of dancing (‘‘Bailando’’) serve as a source of treasured memories of strong and active Mexican women from a past generation bordering the poet’s own. However, there are characteristics of Chicana life on the border inherited from the Mexican past that Mora rejects as nonaffirming. Mexican women’s rigidly prescribed gender roles, especially as they relate to the control of female sexuality, are deconstructed in such poems as ‘‘Dream,’’‘‘Plot,’’ and ‘‘Aztec Princess.’’‘‘Dream’’ presents the patriarchal value that imposes female virginity at marriage: ‘‘Village women say orange blossoms melt on an unclean bride’’ (Mora 1984). The fear that someone will know that the bride has already acted on her sexual desire is seen as laughable in the light of day (and thus reason), yet frightening at night: ‘‘By day I laugh at our Mexican superstitions. / At night they grab me. Draw blood. Like you.’’ The myth of ‘‘wild’’ female sexuality, which must be tightly controlled until marriage, obviously supports the separate spheres for men and women as in ‘‘Aztec Princess’’ where it is the mother, transmitter of male-determined traditions, who insists to a
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daughter who longs for a fuller life: ‘‘Look in the home for happiness.’’ The custom of burying the female umbilical cord in the house is a sign for the female ‘‘to nest inside’’ and symbolizes female confinement against which the young girl rebels by taking the earth, in that no vestige of her cord remains, and carrying it outside to ‘‘breathe.’’ In his study ‘‘Grandmother Borderland,’’ Patrick Murphy rightly points out that ‘‘the girl chooses the outdoors and moonlight against family and domesticity.’’ However, to affirm, as he does, that ‘‘Mora sees custom and family as part of the schism between woman and nature, between personal / cultural identity and place’’ (Murphy 1993, 39–40) is true only with respect to Chicano patriarchal practices, and is not a wholesale rejection of her Mexican heritage of customs and family. In ‘‘Plot’’ it is precisely the mother, herself a victim of the patriarchal view of women as either virgins or whores, who will help her daughter, the next generation, negotiate between her reality and the ‘‘proof of virginity’’ her society requires. She offers the bride-to-be a ring from a Coca Cola can so, by cutting herself, the daughter will be able to prevent the inevitable violence that would result from a lack of a blood stain, whether she is a virgin or not.
by revealing the physical violence she endures at the hands of her husband, the housekeeper violates the boundary of social class. The title is ironic, of course, since the poet, with her ‘‘cool words’’ and ‘‘plastic bandaid,’’ is the one who is the outsider, the marginalized one, the ‘‘alien,’’ at least from the perspective of the human ability to share emotion and to help one another. ‘‘Graduation Morning,’’ the story of the relationship between a nurturing Mexican housekeeper and her young Anglo charge, in turn stands in contrast to ‘‘Illegal Alien,’’ suggesting that children are more capable of deconstructing the border of economic and class difference: ‘‘Though she’s small and thin, / black sweater, black scarf, / the boy in the white graduation robe / easily finds her at the back of the cathedral, / finds her amid the swirl of sparkling clothes, / finds her eyes. / Tears slide down her wrinkled cheeks. / Her eyes, luceros, stroke his face.’’ Vicki Ruiz notes the struggle not only for survival but for dignity of many domestic workers in El Paso, one of the most impoverished cities in the United States: ‘‘Although frequently victimized, Mexicana domestics are not victims but women who meet each day with integrity and endurance’’ (Ruiz 1987, 74). Mora recognizes the bravery of these women from the other side of the river who confront oppression daily.
If the borders between traditional customs of Mexican / Aztec origin and modern Chicana life are permeable, economic privilege separates social classes and does not permit as easy a crossing. Access to education and to several university posts heightened Mora’s awareness of her own privileged position. In her interview with Norma Alarcon in 1986, Mora states: ‘‘When I drive to work at the University [of Texas, at El Paso], I see their houses right across the river. So, every day I am aware of the differences between my life and theirs, and of the role of chance in one’s life. I could have been born on the other side of the river’’ (Alarcon 1986, 2). In ‘‘Illegal Alien,’’ Socorro, the poetic speaker’s Mexican housekeeper, crosses the physical border daily—illegally—to allow her Mexican American senora the freedom to sit ‘‘waiting for a poem’’ (Mora 1984). In ‘‘Mexican Maid,’’ skin color is the socioeconomic indicator, and whiteness is desired by the Mexican woman who serves her sunbathing, patronizing Anglo senora. By contrast, in ‘‘Illegal Alien’’ the poet, despite her Mexican heritage, is unable to provide the emotional comfort Socorro needs when,
Just as economic privilege in Chants distances women of different classes, the clash between English and Spanish is presented as a linguistic border that also separates ‘‘them’’ from ‘‘us.’’ Without language there is no communication, and in the United States people of other cultures are silenced when ‘‘English only’’ is the rule. Assimilation can mean deculturation. All too often ‘‘linguistic terrorists’’ in power act to wipe out any trace of other languages in this country for, as Gloria Anzaldua asserts: ‘‘Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out’’ (Anzaldua 1987, 54). No wonder, then, that when Mexican families ‘‘adapt’’ to life on this side of the border, they eventually face the dilemma that the ‘‘Elena’’ of Mora’s poem has when her own language becomes inadequate in everyday life:
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I bought a book to learn English. My husband frowned, drank more beer. My oldest said, ‘‘Mama, he doesn’t want you to be smarter than he is.’’ I’m forty, embarrassed at mispronouncing words, embarrassed at the laughter of my children, the grocer, the mailman. Sometimes I take
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my English book and lock myself in the bathroom, say the thick words softly, for if I stop trying, I will be deaf when my children need my help. (Mora 1984) Mora has said that ‘‘people like Elena are one of the reasons I write’’ (Mora 1992), that she also writes bilingual children’s books peopled with brown faces so that children of Hispanic heritage in this country will learn the value of knowing more than one language as well as see strong cultural role models so rarely present in what they read. Here again, Mora’s views coincide with Anzaldua’s: ‘‘Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself’’ (Anzaldua 1987, 59). In Borders, published in 1986, Mora’s grounding continues to be Nepantla as she further explores the border concepts between generations, classes, races / ethnicities, and languages seen in Chants. The desert appears in fewer poems in this volume, but the rootedness and empowerment that the Southwest symbolizes for Mora in ‘‘Desert Women’’ and ‘‘Disguise’’ are more important here than the real, geographic landscape. Passman points out that ‘‘in Borders, Mora develops the theme of the woman ‘passing’ as an acceptable, assimilated woman, while maintaining her deep sense of connection to the forces that shaped her: her grandmother and the desert’’ (Passman 1990, 331). It is evident that from the vantage point of the adult lyric speaker the bonds between women of differing generations and retrieved cultural heritage are intertwined. The endurance and strength of ‘‘desert women’’ are underscored in the poem of the same name: Desert women know about survival. Fierce heat and cold have burned and thickened our skins. Like cactus we’ve learned to hoard, to sprout deep roots, to seem asleep, yet wake at the scent of softness in the air, to hide pain and loss by silence, no branches wail or whisper our sad songs safe behind our thorns. Don’t be deceived. When we bloom, we stun. (Mora 1986, 80)
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Adversity is a toughening influence in the desert, and the apparent passivity of desert women, like that of the cactus, is simply an illusion for, as Mora says, ‘‘even in inhospitable places, cactus bears fruit’’ (Mora 1993, 56). Just as Southwest women look to the desert as teacher of survival, as nurturer, and as refuge, the speaker’s childhood memories in ‘‘Disguise’’ revolve around her grandmother’s lap where she curled up after a game of dress-up, a safe haven that allowed her to be ‘‘the real me.’’ She likens her present routine as an adult woman who ‘‘passes’’ in a grown-up world to that long-ago pretending to be what is not ‘‘the real me,’’ and she dreams of the comfort that special place allowed: Black heels and a proper gray dress walk down the hall on a fall afternoon Grown Up I stand on tiptoes in there to smear on make-up every day walk stilt legs on thin heels, daydream of shedding this heavy skin, fitting in a steady lap. (Mora 1986, 45) However, the reality is that she must continue to behave as a grown-up whose physical appearance exudes self-confidence despite her desire to shed the outer trappings of adult womanhood. The class lines initially drawn in Chants between senora and maid continue to be divisive and difficult to cross. In ‘‘Echoes,’’ feelings of solidarity with the Mexican maid, as before, do not translate into action: Again and again I hear: just drop the cups and plates on the grass. My maid will pick them up. Again and again I feel my silence, the part whirring round me. I longed to hear this earth roar, to taste thunder. to see proper smiles twist as those black words echoed in the wind again and again: just drop . . . my maid just drop . . . my maid Perhaps my desert land waits to hear me roar, waits to hear
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me flash: NO. NO. Again and again. In their introduction to Infinite Divisions, Rebolledo and Rivero observe that ‘‘for middleclass Chicanas, the distinction between mistress and maid is guiltily observed: they are sisters in femaleness above all’’ (Rebolledo 1993, 112); thus ‘‘in the world in that she lives the poetic speaker [of Borders] is not quite at home; there is always a pea under the mattress, a cactus thom in the flesh’’ (32). In this case the discomfort comes from the speaker’s awareness of the inequity with which she and the Mexican maid are treated because of class difference. Some of the previous context of separation caused by the language border also continues in Borders, yet there are even deeper connections made between language and discrimination, between the linguistic border and its intersections with racial / ethnic ones. Now the focus is not only the Spanish language, which is not valued in the United States, but the denigration of the culture itself. Even though the speaker of ‘‘Bilinqual Christmas’’ and ‘‘Now and Then, America’’ has ‘‘made it’’ into the boardrooms and corporate offices, she is ‘‘different’’ (read Mexican American) and feels patronized, marginalized, and tokenized in a society that pays lip service to diversity by ‘‘adding a dash of color / to conferences and corporate parties / one per panel or office / slight south-of-the-border seasoning,’’ but outside the corporate Christmas party office has, instead of ‘‘twinkling lights,’’ ‘‘search lights / seeking illegal aliens / outside our thick windows’’ (Mora 1986, 21). In the second poem, ‘‘Now and Then, America,’’ the speaker rejects the sterile conformity of the model for success in the United States that does not allow her, despite her socioeconomic class, her authenticity, her mezcla. The lyric voice pleads for true acceptance, not only of her American side, but of her Mexican side as well: Who wants to rot as she marches through life in a pin-striped suit neck chained in a soft, silk bow in step, in style, insane. Let me in to board rooms wearing hot colors, my hair long and free, maybe speaking Spanish. Risk my difference, my surprises, Grant me a little life, America. (33)
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The value placed on the Mexican side, with its liveliness and animated display of emotions, is evident in ‘‘Sonrisas,’’ which uses the imagery of ‘‘two rooms’’ to indicate the crossroads that characterize the poetic persona’s life: I live in a doorway between two rooms, I hear quiet clicks, cups of black coffee, click, click like facts budgets, tenure, curriculum, from careful women in crisp beige suits, quick beige smiles that seldom sneak into their eyes. I peek in the other room senoras in faded dresses stir sweet milk coffee, laughter whirls with steam from fresh tamales sh, sh, mucho ruido, they scold one another, press their lips, trap smiles in their dark Mexican eyes. (20) The guarded demeanor and conformist dress of the academic community contrast sharply with the casual, ‘‘sweet’’ vivaciousness of the Mexican womanculture, in both of which Mora is capable of participating but between which she feels torn. This awareness of her border identity informs Mora’s casting of two new images in this second volume: the border between mother and children and the border between men and women. Although we cannot assume that in every poem the lyric speaker’s experience is that of the poet, it is important to note that in the period that the poetry of Borders was being written, Mora was a divorced mother with three children, and her life experiences at that time almost surely shaped the poetic presentation of these boundaries. As any mother knows, the border between mother and child is a delicate one; it can be bridged but is made ever more difficult because of outside pressures. The mother is the guardian of her young children’s safety, both physical and emotional, and despite the fact that the nurturing mother would like to spare her children pain, it is often not possible. The mother in ‘‘Same Song’’ is sensitive to her adolescent children’s feelings of dissatisfaction and self-criticism when they look into the mirror, because she knows that in a world that provides images of a
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perfection impossible to achieve, her twelveyear-old daughter will never be fair-skinned enough and her sixteen-year-old son will never have the perfect body he desires. A visit to the hospital in ‘‘Waiting Room: Orthopedic Surgery’’ reveals just how fragile the human body is: Usually I believe my children charmed, armed with rubber bones and flesh beneath their sweet, soft skin. Here canes, casts, wheelchairs, bound feet tell loud tales . . .
So who can hear the words we speak you and I, like but unlike, and translate us to us side by side? (10)
. . . we are fragile we bleed and break. (42) Even before a mother’s work of raising her offspring is completed, in a rare moment it is possible to gain a glimpse into the relationship between her and her child when the mother will have grown older and the child will be an adult. Whereas now she is the nurturer, it will then be her child who, in reversed roles, becomes the source of encouragement. ‘‘Goblin’’ describes this flash of the future when, in encountering a storm after leaving the movie house, ‘‘You pulled my hand gently / jumping puddles, tugging / ‘You can make it. Jump’ / My eleven-year-old mothering me’’ (43). Certainly the mother-child border can be a separator, as in ‘‘The Heaviest Word in Town’’—which is ‘‘NO’’—but Mora as mother of teenagers, who are at an age marked by particularly difficult passages for both mothers and children to negotiate, is taken back in ‘‘Oral History’’ to the protected feeling of years past when her Tia Lobo would tell her and her siblings stories that linked their past and future, her four lobitos ‘‘who even now curl around the memory / of you and rest peacefully / in your warmth’’ (50). Mora surely realizes that the legacy of the stories of their ancestry will live on long after she, her children’s mother, is not here anymore. Thus, ‘‘saving the stories’’ through generations is a task that allows mediation not only between mother and child, but also between her Americanized children and their Mexican roots. The border between men and women is even less easily crossed, especially when there have been repeated failures of communication and authenticity of self is at stake. The color-separated symbols of male and female placed in opposition on the cover of the book and the positioning of the title poem as the first the reader encounters clearly signal the importance of this particular border.
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Mora quotes researcher Carol Gilligan with respect to the difference in men’s and women’s language: ‘‘My research suggests that men and women may speak different languages that they assume are the same’’ (9). ‘‘The side-by-side translations / were the easy ones,’’ says the poetic persona, acknowledging the fact that sexual liaisons and pillowtalk are facile but that really hearing the other in a relationship is much harder to achieve:
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When women are defined primarily as objects for sexual gratification or when motherhood and the accompanying self-sacrifice and nurturing of others become cultural imperatives, expressions of doubt in female self-worth become common, such as in ‘‘Diagnosis’’ when the senora facing a hysterectomy expresses her fear—‘‘No sere mujer, doctor’’—to the Anglo who will remove what he calls ‘‘a useless uterus’’ (25). In ‘‘Out of Business’’ the female is the ‘‘doctor’’ and men are her ‘‘patients’’; she serves their emotional needs by squeezing out the pus from their infected wounds, only to never get repaid or have them reciprocate. The title refers to the statement that leads off the poem: ‘‘First Aid Station Closed. Newly Divorced Men Don’t Stop By My Door’’ (61). Vulnerable after divorce, the poet in ‘‘Internal Battle’’ describes the challenge to reconcile the craving for independence with the need for a man in a relationship where she can ‘‘gaze at our shadows distinct / yet linked by choice’’ (55). Bridging this chasm places strength and softness in opposition, yet both are needed for the poetic female persona to reestablish faith in a man. Annihilation of self is a danger as she becomes absorbed in another relationship, and she declares hatred of her softness that allows her, like her cat, to ‘‘be bruised again’’ (57). Her fear of disappearing is countered by a firm grip in ‘‘Woman Mysteriously Disappears’’: That’s what the headline would say but I’m too clever. I grip bridge rails when inviting rivers call me
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far down below tempting me to dare. When I’m with you I secretly grip furniture and door handles. I never stare into your eyes for long. (56) In societies and cultures where male dominance is standard, the female in a heterosexual love relationship may well risk denial, even annihilation, of her very identity. The differences between male and female make revealing one’s true self a frightening step (‘‘My Mask’’), but ultimately the poet finds the union ‘‘by choice’’ that will allow her to be who she is. Mora’s poem ‘‘Marriage II’’ is undoubtedly autobiographical, since the two who unite to ‘‘dig together’’ for the songs of the past and the blooms of the present are archaeologist and poet, in the poem and in real life. If gender politics and family politics are the prevalent borders in her second volume, in Mora’s third collection of poetry, Communion, published in 1991, the primary emphasis is on geopolitics. Mora extends her ‘‘border feminism’’—a term Saldivar Hull uses in her essay ‘‘Feminism on the Border’’ (Saldivar Hull 1991, 211)—as she writes of situations she encounters in her travels. Since 1986, the year in that a Kellogg Scholar grant enabled her to study cultural conservation issues, Mora has traveled to many foreign lands, an experience she considers one of her great teachers (Mora 1993, 153): ‘‘It is in my trips out of this country that I best see our weaknesses and our strengths’’ (159). Although the borders presented in Chants and Borders are still present in this volume (desert / modern woman in ‘‘Desert Pilgrimage’’; class difference in ‘‘The Other Woman’’; American / Mexican culture in ‘‘Foreign Spooks’’; language in ‘‘A Voice’’; mother and child in ‘‘Teenagers;’’ men and women in ‘‘Probing’’; a rejection of violence toward women in ‘‘Perfume’’ and ‘‘Emergency Room’’), a concern for a broader community (and hence the title, Communion) is the salient theme of this collection. Mora says, ‘‘Ultimately my community is not only my ethnic community but also all the like-minded souls seeking a more equitable world’’ (147), and the poet searches on her travels for those who practice the same rites, for those who profess the same faith in creating a better world, as she does.
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Communion signifies an act of sharing, of seeing the commonalities, of transcending—not denying—the differences that separate us. Writing from the border(s) has not been a confining experience for Mora, for she is able to deconstruct geopolitical markers thanks to her border dweller’s identity; she knows that borders can be crossed in at least two directions. At the same time her feminist solidarity allows her to understand other women’s lives, across country and custom and class and ethnicity. Thus, such poems as ‘‘Veiled’’ and ‘‘Too Many Eyes’’ question the silence and gravity of Pakistani women in the face of customs that silence and confine them. In ‘‘Veiled,’’ the subversive poetic ‘‘we’’ stealthily takes all the burqas to the river to free the trapped emotions they contain, and wonders: will the water loosen laughter trapped inside those threads will light songs rise and swirl with the morning mist or will sighs rise, heavy, dark like storm clouds? (Mora 1991, 34) ‘‘Too Many Eyes’’ captures the clash of customs Mora experienced in Pakistan, where she was stared at constantly, a visitor in a culture that covers women and makes them nearly invisible: Horseflies, those eyes nipped at my unveiled skin day after day wearied me until I, a vain woman, avoided mirrors and make-up, pulled my hair back with one quick twist, hid in my wrinkled clothes. (36) Although American women and Mexican women don’t veil themselves physically, Mora is aware that life on the border of any patriarchal culture reveals a shared female experience of suppression. Enforced domesticity and public invisibility of women are common characteristics for women who live in such cultures, and when Mora read her border poems in a ‘‘safe,’’ private setting in Pakistan, the women said to her: ‘‘You are just like us’’ (Mora 1993, 97). Even in revolutionary Cuba, where Mora witnessed improved access to health care for all, streets safe even late at night, and artists happily engaged in their work, observation of the female rituals of life makes Mora question in ‘‘The Mystery’’ the omnipresent smile on
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women’s faces as they work hard, live poor, and follow orders in a society where they are destined to produce cookie-cutter soldiers: ‘‘They smile when their children march / by in uniform, all in step, all smiling’’ (Mora 1991,41). Children and mothers or grandmothers become the special focus in Communion as Mora examines the border between the haves and havenots. Whether the setting is Peru, Mexico, or the Dominican Republic, the harshness of the struggle for sheer survival is documented by the eyes of children. The disenfranchised little gift in ‘‘Fences’’ who daily touches what she will never own is contrasted with the turistas’ easy-flowing wealth: Mouths full of laughter, the turistas come to the tall hotel with suitcases full of dollars. Once my little sister ran barefoot across the hot sand for a taste. My mother roared like the ocean, ‘‘No. No. It’s their beach. It’s their beach.’’ (50) Often we look away so as to avoid really seeing poverty’s painful injustices, unprepared, as in ‘‘Picturesque: San Cristobal de las Casas’’ to bear witness to the exhaustion that being poor exacts: ‘‘But no one told me about the bare feet. / No one told me about the weaver’s chair, a rock. / No one told me about the wood bundles bending / women’s backs. No one told me about the children / who know how to open their smiles / as they open their dry palms’’ (57). Just as often, as in ‘‘Peruvian Child,’’ we as privileged tourists take snapshots that commodify the subject for ‘‘picturesque’’ consumption: We wanted, as usual, to hold a picture of the child in a white border, not to hold her mud-crusted hands or feet or face, not to hold her, the child in our arms. (60) Mora asks, Whose beach is it, anyway? Why must we look away when we confront inequities in this world? How can we cross the borders that divide us as human beings? How can we reach communion with other peoples and make space for future generations to live in a healthier world? The answers to Mora’s questions go back to lessons learned in Nepantla. If, as Renato Rosaldo says, Anzaldua’s Borderlands / La Frontera ‘‘celebrates the potential of borders in opening new forms of human understanding’’ (Rosaldo 1989, 216), so too the poetic work of
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Pat Mora offers solutions. To bridge the borders, you need the right coyote to help you across. Mora’s coyotes or mediators are a strong, female-identified culture and a belief in those aspects of cultural conservation that affirm the self. In ‘‘Cissy in a Bonnet,’’ a poem about Mora’s daughter’s bonnet, which the small child called her brain, worn backward at age four and still carried by Mora wherever she moves, the mother-poet suggests that an integrated self-identity is only fully realized when one is able to look not only ahead but behind: Maybe part of the journey is always backwards, the careful brushing away of the layers, personal archaeology, uncovering forgotten, broken pieces, sifting even in our dreams until we fit the jagged edges into round wholes we cherish privately; and occasionally we break the code, with our fingers read our early symbols, reunite with the rare spirits we house. (Mora 1991, 81) Mora, like the new mestiza of whom Anzaldua speaks, transcends her duality so she is ‘‘on both shores at once’’ (Anzaldua 1987, 78). Mora calls herself ‘‘a compact hybrid, the flor de noche buena’’ (Mora 1992), that grew wild in Mexico but then became domesticated as the poinsettia in this country. Hybrids are bred to retain the strongest characteristics of at least two strains, and strength is the key. Mora believes, in the empowering words of her poem ‘‘The Young for Juana,’’ that ‘‘my hands are strong, and from within I rule’’ (Mora 1991, 78). Pat Mora’s ability to negotiate borders is a powerfully positive tool in working for justice in an imperfect world. Source: Linda C. Fox, ‘‘From Chants to Borders to Communion: Pat Mora’s Poetic Journey to Nepantla,’’ in Bilingual Review, Vol. 21, No. 3, September–December 1996, pp. 219–31.
SOURCES Borjas, George J., ed., Introduction to Mexican Immigration to the United States, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 1–12. Camp, Roderic Ai, ‘‘The Time of the Technocrats and Deconstruction of the Revolution,’’ in The Oxford History of Mexico, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 609–36. ‘‘De La Madrid Indirectly Hits U.S. Intervention in Panama’s Affairs,’’ in Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1988, http://articles.latimes.com/1988-03-27/news/mn-431_1_dela-madrid, (accessed on August 1, 2009).
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Dick, Bruce Allen, ‘‘Pat Mora,’’ in A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets, University of Arizona Press, 2003, pp. 93–106.
Torres, Hector A., Introduction to Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers, University of New Mexico Press, 2007, pp. 1–32.
Escamilla, Kathleen, ‘‘A Brief History of Bilingual Education in Spanish,’’ ERIC Digest, Education Research Information Center, March, 1989, http://www.eric.ed .gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExt Search_SearchValue_0=ED308055&searchtype=keyword &ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=kw&_pageLabel=Record Details&objectId=0900019b8010cdc5&accno=ED308055&_ nfls=false (accessed August 1, 2009).
———, and Pat Mora, ‘‘Pat Mora: I was Always at Home in Language,’’ in Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers, University of New Mexico Press, 2007, pp. 244–74.
Gerstenzang, Jame, and Dan Williams, ‘‘De la Madrid Lectures Reagan on Drug Effort—Defends Mexico’s Fight to Halt Cultivation and Smuggling, Says U.S. Fails to Curb Consumption,’’ in Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1988, http://articles.latimes.com/1988-02-14/news/mn42660_1_de-la-madrid (accessed August 1, 2009). Ikas, Karin Rosa, ‘‘Pat Mora: Poet, Writer, Educator,’’ in Chicana Ways: Conversations with Ten Chicana Writers, University of Nevada Press, 2002, pp. 127–52. Lipski, John M., ‘‘The Importance of Spanish in the United States,’’ in Varieties of Spanish in the United States, Georgetown University Press, 2008, pp. 1–13. Moll, Luis C., ‘‘Bilingual Classroom Studies and Community Analysis: Some Recent Trends,’’ in Educational Researcher, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1992, pp. 20–24. Mora, Pat, ‘‘Elena,’’ in Chants, 1984, reprint ed., Arte Publico Press, 1994, p. 58. Nicholas, Peter, and Tracy Wilkinson, ‘‘Obama Pledges Help in Mexico’s War on Drug Lords, with an Exception,’’ in Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2009, http://www. latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-mexico172009apr17,0,7867926.story (accessed on August 1, 2009). ‘‘North American Free Trade Agreement,’’ in United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agriculture Service, http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/Policy/nafta/nafta. asp (accessed August 1, 2009). Sanz, Cristina, ‘‘Bilingual Education Enhances Third Language Acquisition: Evidence from Catalonia,’’ in Applied Psycholinguistics, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2000, pp. 23–44. Suarez, Virgil, ‘‘Hispanic American Literature: Divergence and Commonality,’’ in U.S. Society & Values, February 2000, pp. 32–37.
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‘‘United States Foreign-Born Population,’’ in U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html (accessed on August 1, 2009).
FURTHER READING Casanova, Rosa, and Adriana Konzevik, Mexico: A Photographic History, Editorial RM, 2007. In this work, written and edited by Casanova and Konzevik, the holdings of Mexico’s Fototeca Nacional, or national photographic archives, are reproduced, offering a glimpse of Mexico’s history over the past 130 years. The photos catalogue the social and political changes in the nation’s history, as well as provide an overview of the artistic and cultural developments that have occurred in Mexico. Garcı´ a, Cristina, ed., Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature, Vintage, 2006. Garcı´ a introduces this collection of essays, stories, and poetry by Hispanic American writers. The collection is organized chronologically by the various movements in Hispanic American literature. Hakuta, Kenji, The Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism, Basic Books, 1986. Hakuta explores the issue of bilingualism and bilingual education, discussing in particular the differences in the ways children and adults learn a second language. Hakuta also studies the educational and intellectual value of the acquisition of a second language. Worth, Richard, Mexican Immigrants (Immigration to the United States), edited by Robert Asher, Facts On File, 2004. Worth provides a brief history of Mexican immigration to the United States. The work is targeted at a young adult audience.
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Fully Empowered ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is a poem by Pablo Neruda, who is considered to be one of the greatest twentieth-century poets. The poem was first published in Spanish in 1962 in the volume of the same title, Plenos poderes, which was translated into English as Fully Empowered by Alastair Reid in 1975. This book was reprinted in 2001 with an introduction by Reid. Both editions are bilingual, with the Spanish text appearing alongside the English translation. The poem can also be found in The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2003. Another translation of the poem, titled ‘‘Full Powers,’’ can be found in the collection of Neruda’s poems Five Decades: Poems, 1925–1970, translated by Ben Belitt and published by Grove Press in 1994. Neruda wrote ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ quite late in his long poetic career. It is a personal, highly symbolic poem that employs images that recur many times in Neruda’s poetry. It might be understood to refer to the poet’s creative process and his role as a poet. With its richness of imagery and the affirmative joy of its theme, ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is an intriguing introduction to Neruda’s work.
PABLO NERUDA 1962
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY One of Latin America’s greatest poets, Neruda was born Neftalı´ Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, on July 12, 1904. His mother died
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communist allies in 1947, Neruda protested against censorship. He was expelled from the Senate and a warrant was issued for his arrest, but he went into hiding and then fled to Argentina.
Pablo Neruda (Sam Falk / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
when he was an infant, and in 1906 he moved with his father to Temuco in southern Chile. At school he was encouraged in his early literary efforts by the poet Gabriela Mistral, who recognized his talent. By the time he graduated from high school he had already published poetry in local newspapers and magazines, and while still in his teens he adopted the name Pablo Neruda. Soon after moving to Santiago, Chile, in 1921 to study French, he published the volume that established his poetic fame—Veinte poemas de amor y una cancio´n desesperada (1924), translated by W. S. Merwin as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1969). In 1927, Neruda traveled to Rangoon, Burma, where he had been appointed Chilean consul. It was the custom in Chile to appoint poets to diplomatic positions abroad. Neruda took the opportunity to travel extensively in the Far East. He also wrote one of his most highly praised poetry books, Residencia en la tierra, which was published in two parts in 1933 and 1935. It established his international reputation and was published in English as Residence on Earth and Other Poems in 1946. Neruda added a third volume, Tercera residencia, in 1947. In 1934, Neruda was sent to Spain as Chilean consul. However, he was relieved of his post after the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 because he wrote a poem in support of the Republican cause against the Fascists. He moved to Paris, where he continued to support the Republicans by founding political and cultural organizations. In 1943, Neruda joined the Communist Party and was elected to the Senate in 1946. But when President Gonza´lez Videla broke with his former
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One of Neruda’s most important poems, an epic celebration of the history and the people of the American continent, Canto general, was published in 1950; excerpts translated by Ben Belitt as Poems from the Canto General were published in 1968. In the early 1950s, Neruda traveled to Italy and France. He met a Chilean woman, Matilde Urrutia, who on his return to Chile in 1952 became his second wife. Neruda’s Odas elementales (1954; Elementary Odes, 1961) made poetry subjects out of everyday objects and became some of his most popular poems. Later in the 1950s and continuing for the remainder of his career, Neruda’s poetry grew less political and more personal. Notable publications include Estravagario (1958; translated by Alastair Reid as Extravagaria, 1972); Plenos poderes (1962; translated by Reid as Fully Empowered, 1975); and Memorial de Isla Negra (1964; translated by Reid as Isla Negra: A Notebook, 1981). In 1970, Neruda was the Communist Party candidate for the presidency of Chile, but he withdrew in order to support the socialist candidate, Salvador Allende, a personal friend. After Allende’s victory in 1970, Neruda was appointed Chile’s ambassador to France. The following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda died of cancer on September 23, 1973, in Santiago, twelve days after Allende was assassinated in a right-wing coup that toppled Chile’s socialist government.
POEM SUMMARY Stanza 1 ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is a poem about how the poet writes, how he mines the material for his work. It is also a celebration of the entire range of his life as a human being. The poem must be understood metaphorically, since there is no literal meaning to many of the phrases he uses. In the first stanza, the poet says that he writes outside in the sunshine, in the crowded street. Perhaps he means by this that he writes about matters that everyone can see and participate
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in, as part of a human community. Varying the metaphor, he continues that he writes when the tide is in, suggesting a seaside location, but again this should not be understood literally. He likely means that he writes when the tide of creativity flows in him. These are all places, he states at the end of line 2, where he can write well. He then uses a musical metaphor, but he is talking about writing and self-expression. In line 3, he identifies something that puts a brake on his creativity, and he calls it night. It stops his work for a while but then he learns how to use the night, perhaps as material for his poetry.
Stanza 2 In stanza 2, the poet continues to write of his own creativity in highly metaphoric language. In line 6 and 7, he writes of the night coming while his eyes focus on something that can be clearly seen and measured, perhaps as material for poetry. In line 8, continuing to explore his creative process, he may be referring to a twentyfour-hour period from one sunrise to the next, including all the hours of darkness. During this time, he is creating the means of understanding so that he can unlock his own creativity. In the twilight, he explores. By this he may be referring metaphorically to things that are not obvious or not clearly seen or understood. He keeps exploring until the sea fills everything. The sea may be a metaphor for truth and knowledge that can bring the light of understanding to all the dark places, the areas of the mind and heart that were formerly empty or unknown.
Stanza 3 The poet writes in stanza 3 of how he loves the process of poetic creativity he has metaphorically described in the previous two stanzas. He mines all aspects of the psyche, from light to dark, and goes back and forth between them. He is not concerned about death; he embraces life and death, it does not matter which.
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Stanza 5 The poet maintains his thought from the previous stanza but does not try to reach any conclusions. The first line continues to explore metaphorically his sense of obligation to life itself, which spreads out in all directions from the central core of his life. All he knows or cares to know is that he continues to live and do what he does simply because that is what he does. His activity is its own reward and justification.
Stanza 6 Stanza 6 continues to emphasize that there is something about his life and his psychic processes that is beyond any explanation that he could give. He digs deep into his own being with closed eyes and finds two contrary forces pulling at him. One pulls him toward death, while the other seems to celebrate life and does so in order that the poet might celebrate, too.
Stanza 7 In this final stanza, the poet reaches an ambiguous conclusion from everything he has said up to this point. He says that he is formed out of something that is not life. He may perhaps be referring to an inner silence or nothingness that is life in its unmanifest form, but he does not say this explicitly. He leaves it to the reader to understand. He continues with a metaphor about the sea. Just as the waves of a sea break against a reef and pull back stones from it as they ebb, so he, too, is a part of death. Something pulls at him too, and it is death, but paradoxically death is what opens him up to life. He continues to express this paradox in the final line, which returns to the images with which the poem began, of day and night, light and dark. The being of the poet inhabits both these realms, which suggests the ‘‘fully empowered’’ state of being referenced in the title.
THEMES Creativity
Stanza 4 In stanza 4, the poet reflects on how he came to have what he feels are his obligations, perhaps to the earth. He questions from whom or what he may have inherited these obligations. Was it from his parents, he wonders, or from some other, nonhuman source, the mountains, perhaps?
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As the very first line makes clear, ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is a poem about writing. It is about the creative process as experienced by the poet. The poem is entirely metaphorical and might give rise to a number of interpretations. The main thrust of meaning, however, seems relatively clear. Although the poet does not explicitly name them, he identifies two regions of the psyche
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Sit out in nature, perhaps near a lake, river, or sea, and write a poem in which you use imagery drawn from what you are observing and experiencing in the natural world. How does the scene make you feel? What do your senses observe? Find another poem by Neruda that you like and compare it with ‘‘Fully Empowered.’’ Give an oral presentation in which you read both poems aloud and comment on their similarities and differences. What is the purpose of poetry? Does it fulfill a useful function in society? What might that function be? Read the lecture Neruda gave when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lite rature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture-e.html) for ideas on the topic. Consider the issues Neruda raises in his speech and then give a class presentation, showing your main points using PowerPoint or a similar program. Consult Joseph Roman’s biography, Pablo Neruda, written for young adult readers and published in 1992 by Chelsea House in their Hispanics of Achievement series. Using material from this book, write an essay on Neruda in which you explore how and why he supported the Communist Party. What did he think that communism or socialism might achieve in Chile?
that might be called day and night. The day aspect seems to refer to everything that is clearly visible, since the metaphor used is that of the sun. There is also a social element to this day element; it is that part of the poet that engages with other people. In the first stanza, the poet seems very comfortable with that side of the psyche; his work flows out easily. He is happy and untroubled. The other half of the psyche is first mentioned in line 3 of the first stanza. The overall metaphor is that of night. This is not so comfortable or easy
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for the poet. Night seems to slow down his creativity at first, but he learns how to understand the darkness and use it to yield more knowledge and understanding of life, which, of course, will then be expressed in his poetry. What does he mean by this metaphor of night? He may be referring to those aspects of life that are harder to understand and harder to deal with. They may be less obvious than the ‘‘daylight’’ part of the psyche, but they may hold deeper truths. The poet needs to dig down into the deeper parts of his psyche to access them. When he does this, it makes his work more complete, more satisfying. He understands, or seeks to understand, the totality of his being. He is not content with knowing only isolated parts; he wants a full knowledge of himself, and this will empower him, as the title suggests. In learning how to access, in the process of poetic creativity, all aspects of the psyche, the poet states in stanzas 4 and 5 that he is aware of how his being is connected to so much on earth, both human and nonhuman. His own self extends in so many directions, and it all becomes material for poetry. In stanza 4, he speculates about this connection, wondering where it comes from, but in the next stanza he shows no desire for intellectual understanding. He is content just to live, without seeking rational explanations for why he thinks or feels the way he does. This is the secret, he suggests in stanza 6, to his creativity. It is an intuitive process that cannot be explained rationally. When he turns his attention within, cutting off the world of sense perception, he somehow manages to access two contrary forces, the impulse to life and the impulse to death. He creates poetry out of this understanding of the whole range of life.
A Celebration of Life ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ explores poetic creativity yet it is also a celebration of life, the poet’s life in particular but only as it represents something universal. Indeed, in this poem it is hard to separate poetry from life. As the poet seeks understanding of his life, he gives out, in his poetry, the wisdom he has gained. Life and poetry are no more than two names for the same phenomenon. As a poet, Neruda writes of life as he lives and knows it. The more knowledge and understanding he has, the more ‘‘fully empowered’’ he feels. It is a process of coming into himself in all his fullness. He celebrates his life in all its manifold aspects, some knowable, some not. There are no regrets in this poem, no complaints, only acceptance and the impulse to explore and to know, to access the deepest stream
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being aware of opposing elements (light and dark, life and death, for example) is part of the poet’s search for a complete experience of life. This culminates in the occurrence of what is called a paradox. In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M. H. Abrams defines paradox as ‘‘a statement which seems on its face to be self-contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to make good sense.’’ The paradoxes in the poem occur twice in the final stanza. The poet finds that his awareness of death actually shows him life; and then in the final line he states that although it is daylight, he walks in shade. What he means, perhaps, is that he has learned to live at a deeper level than that of the surface, conscious mind. He has mined the depths of the psyche, so even when he is living out his day-to-day activities, he is in fact functioning from another source, perhaps closer to the heart of life, but described in terms that echo the nighttime he evoked earlier in the poem.
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Coastline (Image copyright Jeff Shanes, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
of life as it manifests in the poet’s own being. He aspires to know and embrace everything, leaving nothing out, but this is not a restless search for knowledge. It is ripe with the glow of an achieved state of being that is always fluctuating, never static, and never ceasing to nourish the poet’s inner life. This life consists of a coexistence of opposites that the poet explains with the use of various metaphors. Two of these opposites are life and death. He celebrates life whilst always possessing an awareness of death, from which life is inseparable. Death, for example, is mentioned in stanzas 3, 6, and 7, but it does not impinge on the poet’s celebration of the totality of existence. On the contrary, death is essential for life.
STYLE Paradox One of the main elements in ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is the coexistence of opposites. Experiencing or
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This poem is made up of images rather than statements that can be understood in a literal way. Image in its most basic sense means something that can be pictured by the reader. One such image is that of the sun, which also functions as a symbol. A literary symbol, according to Abrams, is ‘‘a word or phrase that signifies an object or event which in turn signifies something, or has a range of reference, beyond itself.’’ The sun image perhaps suggests a certain clear-headed consciousness the poet possesses at certain times. This image occurs in stanzas 1 and 2 and is implied in the last line of the final stanza. Another image is that of the sea, which occurs in stanzas 1, 2, 5, and 7, as well as being implied in the water imagery of stanza 6. This imagery symbolizes a certain quality of the poet’s consciousness. It may imply his receptiveness to the deeper levels of his mind, the flow of creativity that he is able to access. However, in the final stanza, the meaning of the sea image appears to change. This is an example of a simile, in which two different things are compared in a way that brings out the similarities between them and is often recognized by the occurrence, as in line 27, of the word as. The image of the waves of the sea eroding the reef is compared (starting in line 30) to death, which suggests that the sea is life itself eventually wearing down the physical body (the implied equivalent of the reef referred to in line 27).
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Night, and associated images of darkness, form another set of images in this poem. Like the sun image, night and darkness may be understood as symbols for states of mind or consciousness. Other images include keys, intended to signify the fact that the poet can unlock the mysteries of life, and stone, which is used in connection with death, meaning it lacks the dynamic quality of sea and life. In a broader sense, imagery may refer not only to visual images but to all sense perceptions. For example, the speaker repeatedly (stanzas 1, 5, and 6) presents himself as singing, which is an auditory image. Perhaps by this reference to singing he implies that the writing of poetry might be understood as a kind of celebration or song of life.
Persona The first-person speaker in a lyric poem is referred to as the persona. Persona is from a Latin word meaning mask. Persona refers to the way the poet chooses to present the speaker of the poem. The persona is not to be confused with the author of the poem, although in many lyric poems the two are close, if not identical. In this poem, the persona is, like Neruda, a poet, as the first line states. The persona also presents himself in a number of other guises—as traveler (line 12), although he describes neither a starting point nor a destination because he journeys within the psyche; as a locksmith (lines 8–9) who makes keys and seeks locks to unlock; and throughout the poem as an explorer who absorbs in himself the mysteries of life.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Latin American Poets of the Mid-Twentieth Century While Neruda was the preeminent Latin American poet of his day, there were other poets of distinction during this period. Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948) was well known in his own country and abroad. Huidobro lived in Europe during the 1920s, and it was partly through him that the European movement known as modernism became a force in Latin American poetry, although as D. P. Gallagher points out in Modern Latin American Literature, Latin American poets also had the confidence to discard European influences when they chose to.
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‘‘It was their own experience, their own sensibility, and their own vision that were ultimately to matter,’’ wrote Gallagher. There was no love lost between Huidobro and Neruda, however. Huidobro appears to have resented the fame of the younger poet and sent Neruda anonymous letters attacking him. This is reported by Neruda in his Memoirs, in which he describes Huidobro as ‘‘typical of a long line of incurable egocentrics,’’ but also acknowledges that Huidobro was an ‘‘extraordinarily gifted poet.’’ Another noted Chilean poet was Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), who was one of Neruda’s early mentors and later became his close friend. In 1945, she became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. From the 1920s, Mistral lived mostly abroad. Like Neruda, she was named Chilean consul and served as a diplomat in many different consulates, including Naples, Italy; Madrid, Spain; and Lisbon, Portugal. Toward the end of her life she lived in Roslyn, New York. A greater figure than either Huidobro or Mistral was the Peruvian poet Ce´sar Vellejo (1892–1938). In 1923, Vellejo left Peru for Europe, where he lived for the remainder of his life. In the 1930s, like Neruda, he became passionately and dogmatically committed to communism, and he supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. However, according to Gallagher, Vallejo did not allow his political views to affect his poetry. Vellejo and Neruda were the two greatest Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Neruda regarded Vallejo as a friend and wrote two poems about him. When the two poets both lived in Paris, they saw each other daily. Vallejo was also a friend of Huidobro. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz (1914–1998) is another important Latin American poet of the mid-twentieth century. According to Gallagher, Paz’s poetry shares with Neruda and Vallejo ‘‘the same quest for a better world.’’ Neruda took note of Paz early in the Mexican poet’s career, after Paz’s first book was published, which Neruda thought very promising. Neruda invited Paz to Madrid in 1937 for an anti-Fascist congress of writers. Paz went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. In the 1960s, a number of Latin American poets identified themselves with the Third World, especially Africa and Southeast Asia, believing that they had more in common with these colonized people in their struggles for
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1960s: Some translations of Neruda’s work are published in the United States, but he is still not that well known among the literate public. As a Communist, he is barred from entering the United States, but the ban is relaxed to enable him to attend the thirtyfourth International PEN Congress in New York, in June 1966. Neruda’s public reading in New York is filled to capacity. Those who cannot get in watch and listen on closedcircuit television. Today: Neruda is an extremely popular poet in the United States. His odes and his love poems are particularly well known. Neruda is depicted in the film Il postino, or The Postman (1994), about a friendship between Neruda and a postman.
1960s: In the late 1960s, Neruda takes an active role in Chilean politics, campaigning for the left-wing party led by Salvador Allende. After coming to power in 1970, Allende is assassinated in 1973 and a military dictatorship rules Chile until 1990. Today: Chile is a stable democracy that is committed to maintaining representative
freedom than with Europe or the United States. These poets took a revolutionary, socialist stance in their work, supporting guerilla warfare. Writing in 1975, Gordon Brotherston in his book Latin American Poetry: Origins and Presence, commented, ‘‘Controversial as this emphasis is, not least among the left in Latin America, it has affected recent poetry of the subcontinent deeply and divisively.’’ According to Neruda himself, in an interview with American poet Robert Bly published in 1967, almost all the writers in Chile were on the political left. ‘‘We feel supported and understood by our own people. That gives us great security and the numbers of people who support us are very great,’’ Neruda said. He also commented that poets in the
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government. It has a market-oriented economy and strong financial institutions.
1960s: Almost all poets in Chile, according to Neruda, are committed to political ideals. They are on the left of the political spectrum, calling for radical reform. Political reform in Chile focuses on land reform. Prior to land reform in the mid-1960s, 4.4 percent of landholders own nearly 81 percent of total farmland. The country is divided into a small number of large farms and a large number of farms whose inhabitants are barely able to eke out a subsistence living. Unproductive large farms contribute to a stagnant economy. Today: Chilean poet Carmen Berenguer wins the Ibero-American Pablo Neruda Prize in 2008. Her poetry is considered a voice for the poor people in the southern part of the country. Like much of Neruda’s work, her poetry exhibits a concern for Chilean society. She offers a critique of society that questions the process of modernization.
1960s were no longer tied to traditional poetic forms but had the freedom and the confidence to experiment: When I was a very young poet I was afraid to break all the laws which were enforced on us by the critics. But now . . . all the young poets come in and say what they like and do what they like.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Neruda wrote a total of thirty-five books of poetry, and due to this huge output not every poem he wrote has been discussed directly by critics and reviewers. In the case of ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ most comments refer to the entire book, Fully
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Coral reef (Image copyright Kochneva Tetyana, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Empowered, in which the poem appeared. For example, in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Eliana Rivero comments, ‘‘In this book serenity prevails. . . . In the thirty-six poems included in the volume, there is a fullness of personal power.’’ Rivero then discusses how Neruda presents the duties and obligations of the poet, and states: Ultimately, the poet is the consciousness of mankind, who must try to preserve everything in a meaningful way so it can live eternally. Neruda happily accepts this awesome duty and writes in the ending poem, ‘‘Plenos poderes,’’ that ‘‘y canto porque canto y porque canto’’ (I sing because I sing because I sing).
In ‘‘Pablo Neruda: A Revaluation,’’ Ben Belitt, who has translated many of Neruda’s poems, reaches the same conclusion as Rivero regarding Fully Empowered: ‘‘This redistillation of serenity clings to the whole of Neruda’s Plenos poderes, imparting to each of the thirty-six poems that unmistakable ‘fullness of power’ to which its title bears witness.’’
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In a review of a large collection of Neruda’s poems in English, Jay Parini comments in Nation, ‘‘there are wonders in these pages that will delight readers unfamiliar with the tumultuously varied planet known as Neruda.’’ Parini refers to the ‘‘exquisite poems of Fully Empowered.’’ In his biography Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Adam Feinstein refers to the book as an ‘‘eclectic mix,’’ and in a comment that might well apply to ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ states that it is ‘‘in some ways, an optimistic book. A theme of rebirth, of daily renewal runs through it.’’
CRITICISM Bryan Aubrey Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. In this essay, he discusses ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ as a poem about creativity and the role of the poet. When Neruda published ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ in 1962 he was no longer a young man.
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda (1997) translated by Stephen Mitchell, is a collection of nearly fifty poems from Neruda’s mature period, including Canto General, Elemental Odes, Extravagaria, One Hundred Love Sonnets, and Full Powers. The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009), edited by Cecilia Vicuna and Ernesto Livon-Grosman, is an anthology that covers five hundred years of Latin American poetry, beginning with the response to the European conquest and continuing through to the experimental poetry being written in the twenty-first century. Over 120 poets are represented, including major figures such as Neruda, Ce´sar Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Octavio Paz, and Gabriela Mistral, as well as many lesser-known poets. Many of the works appear in new translations. The poems are also given in their original languages. Laughing Out Loud, I Fly: Poems in English and Spanish (1998) by well-known Mexican American poet Juan Felipe Herrera contains poems suitable for younger readers age twelve and older. Each poem is paired with a black and white drawing by Karen
At the age of fifty-eight, he was entering what has been described as his ‘‘autumnal period,’’ often dated from about 1958 to 1970. According to Christopher Perriam, who uses this term in his book The Late Poetry of Pablo Neruda, the recurring themes of Neruda’s autumnal period are ‘‘the land as a source of images and metaphors, the sea as a metaphor for purity, and solitude as a newly sought-after state of mind and being.’’ All of these images and metaphors can indeed be found in ‘‘Fully Empowered,’’ and they take some of their force and vitality from the place where Neruda lived for many years, in
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Barbour. The collection won the Pura Belpre´ Award. Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems, (1993) edited with a preface by Robert Bly, is a bilingual edition of selections from Latin America’s two greatest poets of the twentieth century. Bly’s preface is full of sharp insights into their work. Along with Neruda and Vallejo, Paz is one of the major poets writing in Spanish in the twentieth century. His Selected Poems (1984) contains sixty-seven poems, rendered into English by a variety of translators, selected from fifty years of the poet’s work. How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch (1999) is an informative and enthusiastic guide to how to read poetry. Hirsch covers a wide range of work, from different periods, nationalities, and styles, ranging from familiar British and American poets such as John Keats, Walt Whitman, and Elizabeth Bishop, to poets from eastern Europe who will likely be new to most readers, and many others. Hirsh’s enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and anyone who reads this book will come away with a deeper and richer understanding of the power of poetry.
the house he built at Isla Negra, Chile, which faced the Pacific Ocean. ‘‘I live by a very rough sea in Isla Negra—my house is there—and I am never tired of being alone looking at the sea and working there,’’ he told the American poet Robert Bly in an interview published in the collection Twenty Poems in 1967. In ‘‘Fully Empowered,’’ Neruda writes of his empowerment as a man and as a poet. By empowerment he means coming into full possession of his knowledge of himself as well as his function and power as a poet. Significantly, this poem is also the title of the collection as a whole;
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THE PROCESS BY WHICH THIS POETRY HAPPENS—POETRY THAT IS THE EXPRESSION OF THE FULLNESS OF BEING, EMERGING FROM THAT ‘ENCHANTED PLACE’ NERUDA REFERRED TO IN HIS NOBEL LECTURE—IS MYSTERIOUS.’’
it sums up the message of the whole book. It is also placed last, as if all the poems before it lead up to it in some way and are necessary for that personal empowerment, which arises from the poet’s sense that he has fulfilled the role to which he was called. In this collection, Neruda presents a wide range of subjects and themes. Poems such as ‘‘Oceans,’’‘‘Water,’’‘‘The Sea,’’— all favorite images with Neruda that recur in ‘‘Fully Empowered’’— ‘‘Bird,’’ and ‘‘Spring’’ record his exquisite observations of and reflections about nature, as does ‘‘Serenade,’’ a poem about the night. There are poems about individuals—an old clock smith the poet knows in Valparaı´ so, an anonymous poor man who has died and is buried—and about collectives. One of the latter is addressed simply to everyone (‘‘For Everyone’’), another, ‘‘The People,’’ is a long poem in tribute to all the ordinary working men over the centuries who have built up the American continent. There are some more abstract poems, about sadness, about the power of language (‘‘The Word’’), which is especially known to Neruda as a poet, and about his duties as a poet (‘‘The Poet’s Obligation’’)—to cheer those whose hearts are closed up, to bring them a kind of freedom. All in all, Fully Empowered is a varied collection. ‘‘I am omnivorous,’’ wrote Neruda in his Memoirs. ‘‘I would like to swallow the whole earth. I would like to drink the whole sea.’’ It is this fullness of appetite for life, the embrace of all that it offers, that gives to the collection Fully Empowered its strength, its wisdom, its understanding, its depth. Much of this wisdom consists of self-knowledge as well as a sense of obligation to humanity as a whole. In the lecture he gave when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, Neruda spoke about these twin aspects of his poetry: ‘‘I believe that poetry is an action . . . in
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which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature.’’ He continued: All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song—but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
The element in these descriptions of poetry and the poet that predominates in ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is self-knowledge, for in order to ‘‘convey to others what we are,’’ the poet must first know who he is, and the poem is a highly symbolic presentation of the process by which the poet accesses the ‘‘enchanted place’’ he spoke of in his Nobel lecture. This place is within the psyche of the poet, and it enables him to know all aspects of himself and to sing his own song for the joy of it as well as for the pleasure and enlightenment of others. ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ is a relaxed, confident, buoyant poem in which the poet is able to access his creativity, the depths of himself, in an easy rhythm that seems to alternate between hard work (he presents himself metaphorically as forging keys and opening doors) and a more passive kind of inward-directed contemplation (described in stanza 6). Many years of writing have shown him the way to navigate the psyche, and he appears to travel it with ease now. He becomes an explorer without ever leaving his own home. Perhaps he resembles the archetype identified by psychologist Carl Jung as the Wise Old Man, a figure who possesses deep insight, who knows the totality of things, and to whom others may turn for knowledge, inspiration, and understanding. This is a very personal poem. Although the poet does not forget or ignore his connections and obligations to the wider world (expressed in stanza 4 and the first line of stanza 5), he writes primarily about himself. The poem emerges from his solitude—the crowded street of line 1 notwithstanding—and celebrates the inner work that allows him to know himself and to sing his song (i.e., write his poems). The recurring trope (a figure of speech in which a word or expression is
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used in a way different from the literal meaning) is that of the poet as singer, and this reiterated Orphic ‘‘I’’ puts in mind the American poet Walt Whitman, whose poetry was greatly admired by Neruda. One can almost picture Neruda walking the same metaphorical path Whitman did when Whitman wrote those two celebratory long poems ‘‘Song of Myself’’ and ‘‘Song of the Open Road.’’ Whether the bard is Neruda or Whitman, these are the songs (poems) of a man who is selfaware in the deepest sense of the word and is aware also of the invisible threads of life that bind him to the entire universe. This is the connection that Neruda hints at in stanzas 4 and 5 of ‘‘Fully Empowered’’—the threads that spread out put in mind the activity of Whitman’s ‘‘A Noiseless Patient Spider,’’ in which the spider, as it puts out its fine silk threads, becomes a symbol for the human soul or spirit in its desire to make connections with its environment. The poet of ‘‘Fully Empowered’’ sings because he can do nothing else, which suggests the indissoluble link between his life and his work. ‘‘Poetry is a deep inner calling in man,’’ Neruda wrote in his Memoirs. He writes, quite simply, because that is what the being known as Pablo Neruda does; it is as an expression of who he is, and he can no more cease to do it than the sun could decide not to rise or water not to flow. Poetry fulfills his destiny; it is the reason for his being. The process by which this poetry happens— poetry that is the expression of the fullness of being, emerging from that ‘‘enchanted place’’ Neruda referred to in his Nobel lecture—is mysterious. Even the poet himself cannot explain it, as he clearly states at the beginning of stanza 6. The poem’s symbolism suggests that he sinks deeply into his own being, immersing himself in the polarities of life, experiencing the psychic equivalents of land and sea, day and night, light and darkness, in a process that involves both effort and lack of effort and that opens him up to life as well as death, to song and to silence, the silence of what he twice refers to as ‘‘non-being.’’ What does he mean by non-being? He is not going to explain it, but it is as if his being unravels and he becomes nothing, or at least nothing that is manifest, and then out of that undifferentiated state he emerges once more, like a song emerging from silence. After all the senses have closed down (note how this process takes place with his eyes closed), they open up again: life emerges from this symbolic death, and does so again and again and again, as
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the eternal pulse of life goes on, which is a song, and Neruda the poet catches the rhythms of this song, its melodies and harmonies, as well as its dissonances, and he gives these out for his fellow humans to hear, to know, and to pass on. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on ‘‘Fully Empowered,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Don Bogen In the following excerpt, Bogen examines the different phases and style changes in Neruda’s poetry. Pity the poets of the New World. If Columbus et al. merely had to subdue the native flora and fauna long enough to set up shop here, the poets had to describe it all. They were stuck with the languages of the Old World—English, Spanish, French, Portuguese—but the literary traditions made about as much sense as a court ball at a trading post. No wonder many of them fell back on the hoariest text of all, the Bible, for a sense of the poet’s role. The myth of Adam naming the creatures in the Garden was perfect for a world their languages had not yet touched. Not only did it simplify the task—if you don’t know what to call this plant, river or group of people, make it up—it gave the poet a combination of innocence and importance that was hard to resist. In this country that vision ended with the closing of the frontier—Walt Whitman is the last successful exemplar—but it survived longer in Latin America. Describing South America in an interview published in Robert Bly’s Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (Beacon, 1971), Pablo Neruda noted ‘‘rivers which have no names, trees which nobody knows, and birds which nobody has described. . . . Everything we know is new.’’ The poet’s task, as he put is, is ‘‘to embrace the world around you, to discover the new world.’’ If everything is new and you’re the only one who determines what’s what, how do you keep your pride at bay, and how do you know when to stop?
The Adamic poet, like his namesake, has a problem: If everything is new and you’re the only one who determines what’s what, how do you keep your pride at bay, and how do you know when to stop? Both Whitman and Neruda had enormous egos, and neither showed much restraint in output. Because Neruda wrote so much, including weak poems in almost all his more than forty books, it’s advisable to start reading him in an edition of selected poems. The best of these, with translations by Anthony
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Kerrigan, W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid and Nathaniel Tarn, has recently been reissued by Houghton Mifflin. The two new translations published by the University of California Press, Jack Schmitt’s version of Canto General and Margaret Sayers Peden’s Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda, provide a closer look at the poet’s work of the 1940s and 1950s—both its glories and its excesses. This was a pivotal period for Neruda—the culmination of one phase of his career and the beginning of another—and these books are important additions to the body of work available in English translation. With Neruda it’s possible to separate the poetry from the life. Both are huge, protean in their variety and ultimately political Neruda, of course, has a sentimental appeal for anyone on the left. His commitment to the socialist cause and his death in the wake of the U.S.-sponsored Chilean coup can make him seem a literary martyr. But Neruda is more complex than this. While a single presence—expansive, passionate, directly personal—lies behind all his work, his career is marked by distinct changes in style and focus. The Adamic voice and political awareness we associate with him today are not strong elements in his early work. The volume that made him famous at 20, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), is a hybrid of French Symbolist yearning for the ineffable, and earthly Latin American eroticism. In the two major books that followed, Residence on Earth I (1933) and II (1935), Neruda turned from a young love poet into a surrealist, capturing the alienation he felt as a diplomat in the Far East in bleak monologues with long, fluid lines and torrents of imagery. The end of this period of surreal despair came in the midthirties when Neruda was serving in the Chilean Embassy in Madrid. His firsthand encounter with fascism during the Spanish Civil War solidified the basic commitment to the left that infuses all his subsequent work. In 1945 he was elected senator in the Chilean legislature; that same year he joined the Communist Party. Source: Don Bogen, ‘‘Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda,’’ in Nation, Vol. 254, No. 3, January 27, 1992, p. 95.
SOURCES Abrams, M. H., A Glossary of Literary Terms, 4th ed., Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981, pp. 127, 195.
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Belitt, Ben, ‘‘Pablo Neruda: A Revaluation,’’ in Pablo Neruda, edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 1989, p. 155. Bly, Robert, ‘‘Interview with Pablo Neruda,’’ in Twenty Poems by Pablo Neruda, translated by James Wright and Robert Bly, Sixties Press, 1967, pp. 102–10. Brotherston, Gordon, Latin American Poetry: Origins and Presence, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 169. ‘‘Chile,’’ in CIA: World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ci.html (accessed August 5, 2009). Feinstein, Adam, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Bloomsbury, 2004, pp. 331–32. Gallagher, D. P., Modern Latin American Literature, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 10, 67. Kuhnheim, Jill S., Textual Disruptions: Spanish American Poetry at the End of the Twentieth Century, University of Texas Press, 2004. Loveman, Brian, Struggle in the Countryside: Politics and Rural Labor in Chile, 1919–1973, Indiana University Press, 1976. Neruda, Pablo, Fully Empowered, translated by Alastair Reid, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975, pp. 133–35. ———, Memoirs, translated from the Spanish by Hardie St. Martin, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977, pp. 264, 266, 286–87. ———, ‘‘Nobel Lecture,’’ in Nobelprize.org, http://nobel prize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/nerudalecture-e.html (accessed July 15, 2009). Parini, Jay, Review of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, in Nation, Vol. 277, No. 21, December 22, 2003, p. 44. Perriam, Christopher, The Late Poetry of Pablo Neruda, Dolphin Book, 1989, p. ix. Rivero, Eliana, ‘‘Pablo Neruda,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 283, Modern Spanish American Poets, 1st ser., edited by Marı´ a A. Salgado, Thomson Gale, 2003, pp. 247–71.
FURTHER READING Bizzarro, Salvatore, Pablo Neruda: All Poets the Poet, Scarecrow Press, 1979. Bizzarro analyzes the social and political aspects of Neruda’s work from 1936 to 1950, and his later work in the context of his overall development. de Costa, Rene´, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, Harvard University Press, 1979. This is a detailed analysis of Neruda’s major works. Costa’s aim is to place these works in two contexts, that of Neruda’s work as a whole and also that of modern poetry.
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Haslam, Jonathan, The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende’s Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide, Verso, 2005. This book tells the story of how the Socialist and Communist political parties in Chile gained strength during the 1960s, culminating in the election of the socialist, Salvador Allende, in 1970. The Allende government was overthrown by a military coup in 1973. Haslam describes the numerous ways in which the U.S. government
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undermined Allende and paved the way for a coup. Longo, Teresa, Pablo Neruda and the U.S. Culture Industry, Routledge, 2002. This is a collection of thirteen essays about all aspects of Neruda’s work and its reception in the United States. The authors discuss the significance of writing about Neruda and Latin American culture in the United States.
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The Hollow Men T. S. ELIOT 1925
T. S. Eliot and his work were at the forefront of the modernist poetry movement. His lengthy poem ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ was written at both the height of this movement and the height of his career. Indeed, it was published in its entirety only three years after the release of Eliot’s most famous epic poem, The Waste Land (1922). Parts of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ were published in the periodicals Chapbook, Commerce, Criterion, and Dial from 1924 to 1925. The poem then appeared in its final cohesive form in Eliot’s 1925 collection Poems, 1909–1925. ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ largely builds on the themes in The Waste Land, specifically the need for death to take place as a means to make way for the new. ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is also written in the same style as its famous predecessor. Both poems additionally share the same source of inspiration: Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novella Heart of Darkness. ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ also alludes to or is heavily influenced by several works, including Dante Alighieri’s fourteenthcentury masterpiece Divine Comedy and William Shakespeare’s 1599 play Julius Caesar. A historical allusion to Guy Fawkes Day (a British holiday) also appears in the poem. The density and depth of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ alone recommend it for further study, as it is not a work that reveals its meaning readily. The poem remains widely available on the Internet and in collections of the author’s works. As of 2009, the 1991 edition of Eliot’s Collected Poems: 1909–1962 remained in print.
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Song of Alfred J. Prufrock.’’ This poem, however, was not published for several years. After leaving Harvard, Eliot returned to Europe, where he befriended the influential poet Ezra Pound. It was Pound who was instrumental in the 1915 publication of ‘‘The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock’’ in Poetry magazine. That same year, Eliot met Vivien Haigh-Wood, an English dancer with a history of mental problems. The couple married in June of that year and settled in London. Their marriage was an unhappy one, and they never had children, ultimately divorcing in 1930. In 1917, Eliot began working as an assistant editor for the Egoist, an avant-garde magazine based in London. Also that year, Eliot’s first collection of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations was published by the Egoist. Pound was once again influential in the publication, even financing the endeavor personally.
T.S. Eliot
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Born Thomas Stearns Eliot in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888, Eliot was the youngest of seven children born to Henry Ware Eliot (president of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company) and Charlotte Champe Stearns (a schoolteacher and an amateur poet). Eliot’s family roots were tied to New England, and he spent his childhood summers there. His interest in literature emerged early, and he was writing short stories by the age of sixteen. In 1906, Eliot attended Harvard University, a family tradition. He graduated with a B.A. in comparative literature in 1909 and an M.A. in English literature in 1910. As a student, Eliot became enamored of the Symbolist movement (a largely French phenomenon), which led him to travel to Paris in 1910. He befriended the artistic and literary luminaries of the day, including Pablo Picasso and E´mile Durkheim. The following year, Eliot returned to Harvard to work on his doctorate. Despite completing his dissertation in 1916, he never presented his thesis nor earned the degree. From 1910 to 1912, Eliot wrote the poems that launched his career, specifically ‘‘The Love
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The following years saw Eliot further ensconcing himself in the society of London’s intellectual and literary elite. The release of a second volume of poetry and a volume of criticism further established his literary career. Then, in 1922, Eliot forever secured his reputation with the publication of his iconic epic poem The Waste Land. That same year, Eliot also edited James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Both works were celebrated as masterpieces and have since been recognized as the iconic works of the modernist movement. Also in 1922, Eliot began working as founding editor of the Criterion, a literary magazine that was hailed throughout Europe. Indeed, despite his troubled marriage and his wife’s failing health, Eliot’s career thrived. Portions of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ were published in various periodicals from 1924 to 1925; the complete poem appeared in Eliot’s 1925 collection Poems, 1909–1925. Eliot’s tumultuous personal life left him in a spiritual crisis that led him to join the Church of England and become a British subject in 1927. This period marked a transition in Eliot’s life and work, as he published some unpopular conservative criticism and began to move away from the modernist aesthetic for which he had become renowned. His verse also became more explicitly religious, which can be seen in his acclaimed 1930 volume Ash-Wednesday. In the latter half of his career, Eliot wrote more plays than poetry, including The Family Reunion (1939). His 1949 play The Cocktail Party won a Tony Award in 1950. Nevertheless, his poetry was far more acclaimed, especially his 1943 collection Four Quartets. In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Yet, following World War II, none of the poetry Eliot produced was as praised as his earlier successes. In January of 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher (the couple had no children), and finally achieved a measure of personal happiness. He died in London eight years later, on January 4, 1965. His body is buried in Westminster Abbey. Throughout his career, Eliot supplemented his income by working as a lecturer at universities across the United States, and he also served as literary editor at London’s Faber & Faber from 1925 until his death. He has been acknowledged internationally for his work with numerous honorary degrees and commendations, and he remains a pivotal figure in twentieth-century literature.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
‘‘The Hollow Men’’ was set to music and the score was published by Oxford University Press, 1951.
An audiobook including ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ narrated by Eliot and released by HarperCollins in 1992 is titled T. S. Eliot Reads: ‘‘Four Quartets,’’ The Waste Land, ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ and Other of His Poems.
POEM SUMMARY I In a ten-line verse, the speakers claim to be empty yet full, evoking references to the straw men burned in effigy in England on Guy Fawkes Day (a holiday that commemorates the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy to blow up the British Parliament and King James 1st on November 5, 1605). Made of straw, these men are without depth and significance, like the grass in the breeze, or like the movement of rodents over debris in the basement. The next verse is a couplet in which numerous contradictory terms (such as the idea of being colorless, yet possessing a hue) are introduced. Notably, there is no concrete indication of what these paradoxes are referring to. In the following six-line stanza, references are made to those who have died and passed on to the afterlife. The speakers declare that the dead may think of them, and if they do, they think of them as empty yet full.
II This section appears to be narrated by a singular speaker as opposed to the plural speakers in section I. In the first ten-line stanza, the speaker states that in his fantasies of the afterlife, there are eyes he cannot bring himself to look at and that are not present. But in the afterlife, those eyes are like the daylight and there is also a tree that moves. There are words in the breeze that are as somber as a dying star. In the next eight-line stanza, the speaker says he does not want to get any closer to the afterlife
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and wants to wear costumes to hide himself from it. He wants to be as elusive as the breeze. In the section’s final couplet, the speaker again notes that he wishes to avoid the ultimate assembly that will occur in the afterlife.
III In this section, the narrator reverts to the plural voice, but the verses again refer largely to the land of death. In the first six-line stanza of the section, reference is made to that land as a desert. There are also stone statues there, elevated and worshiped by the dead. All of this takes place beneath a dying star. (Here, the reference to the dying star is repeated from the first stanza of section II). Then, in the second (seven-line) stanza, the speaker indicates that there is another afterlife, and that the previous stanza refers to it. Furthermore, in this second afterlife the dead awake without company, just when they are filled with affection, like mouths meant for kissing. Instead, those mouths beseech the crumbling statues.
IV The speakers open the section with a five-line stanza that again refers to the eyes that are absent (this image is initially mentioned in the first stanza of section II). In fact the eyes are missing from a vale filled with fading stars. The vale is as empty as the stuffed men (indeed, the same words used to describe them are used to describe the gorge). The vale is also described as the broken jaw of vanished empires.
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In the following four-line stanza, this gorge is the final assembly place where the straw men feel their way as one. They do not speak and they come together on the shore of a swollen waterway. The section’s third stanza is comprised of seven lines. In it, the speakers state that without eyes, there is no sight. Should the eyes become present again, they will be an undying star, and a special type of rose representative of the church. This rose is also a reference to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In Dante, the rose symbolizes heaven. For the speakers in Eliot’s poem, this rose is the only hope of the hollow men.
In the next five-line stanza, the speaker (or speakers, as this is unclear in the poem’s final section) says that a shadow lies in the space separating theory and practice, movement and deed. Between the stanzas an italicized quotation from the Lord’s Prayer is set flush with the right margin. The section’s third stanza is made up of five lines. Here the speaker states that the shadow falls in the space separating the idea and the creative act, the feeling and the reaction to it. An italicized line declaring that life is not short follows, again set flush with the right margin. In the following seven-line stanza, there are more descriptions of the shadow. It lies amidst the space between yearning and paroxysm, power and being, the core and the fall.
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
V This section opens with a four-line italicized stanza of a nursery rhyme, an alteration of ‘‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.’’ The mulberry bush, however, is replaced by a cactus plant, again referencing the desert imagery initially introduced in the first stanza of section III.
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Use the Internet to research the first half of the twentieth century and the numerous events in the field of poetry that occurred during that period. (Eliot’s life and work spanned these years.) Build a timeline or PowerPoint presentation to display the information. Much critical discussion of Eliot’s ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ centers around his previous epic poem The Waste Land. In an essay, compare the two in terms of theme and style. ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is a highly visual poem. It is filled with fantastical and surreal imagery. Make a collage, poster, painting, drawing, sculpture, or other visual representation inspired by the poem. In an accompanying artist’s statement, explain how the project changed or enhanced your interpretation of ‘‘The Hollow Men.’’ Read the 2008 anthology A Treasury of Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandberg, Walt Whitman, edited by Frances Schoonmaker, Gary D. Schmidt, Brod Bagert, and Jonathan Levin. With the exception of Carl Sandburg, this collection of classic poetry for young readers includes the work of poets who were essential precursors to the modernist movement. Choose a poem from the anthology and lead a class discussion about the poet’s influence on the movement. Be prepared with notes on the poet and the poem, as well as their era.
The single line from the Lord’s Prayer is repeated. The section’s (and the poem’s) penultimate (next to last) stanza is three lines long. Each line is comprised of fragments from the three offset italicized lines that preceded it.
Death
The final stanza is four italicized lines. The first three are identical, and the speaker says that this is how the apocalypse will be. Then, in the final line, the speaker says that the apocalypse will not take place with a great crash but with little more than a quiet moan.
Death pervades ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ from beginning to end. The artificial men are empty yet full. They reference a holiday centered on the tradition of burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes, an act in which death is implicit. A second implication of death is also part of this metaphor. Indeed, the
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Dry leaves (Image copyright Pefkos, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
hollow men of the title call to mind an image of corpses, bodies whose souls have departed. Even the afterlife is a dead place, filled with dying stars and made of a desert landscape. It is also a sightless place, one in which eyes do not exist. In the afterlife, there are crumbling statues and vanished empires. There is a shadow that lies in the space between things. All of these images are of death or are at least deathlike. An extension of this theme is that death is necessary to make way for the new. This death applies to old gods, old religions, and old ideals, all of which will fall by the wayside to make room for new gods, new ideals, new ideas, and the like. This is pointed out by Jewel Spears Brooker in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. She says that ‘‘Many figures in Eliot’s early poems, including all the gods and semigods . . . have to die or be put to death as the condition for the continuation of life. Those who cannot die cannot really live.’’ From there, Brooker goes on to note that ‘‘in ‘The Hollow Men,’ Eliot does not go beyond a presentation of emptiness, but in the act of presenting that, he seems to accept the
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death that is the essential step toward his own vita nuova ‘new life’.’’ This theme can even be seen in the image of the mouths that beseech crumbling statues. It is further underscored by Eliot’s quotations of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a work that contains a similar, if not identical, theme. Yet, while the old must die to make way for the new, that does not prevent Eliot from using the old as a foundation for the new. This can be seen textually, as the poem (like much of Eliot’s work) contains numerous allusions, quotations, and modified quotations from Shakespeare, Conrad, and Dante. Thus, textually, at least, the old does not make way for the new, but is instead used to create it.
Failure of Religion A secondary theme in Eliot’s poem is the failure of religion. Notably, this theme is related to the idea that the old must die to make way for the new. The crumbling statues and the mouths that beseech them specifically seem to reference failed religions,
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or at least failed prayer. That the mouths were about to kiss and are instead set to a seemingly futile task again seems to speak to the futility of religious ritual. The crumbling statues appear not long before the poem’s reference to vanished empires. This latter connection further underscores the idea that the old must disappear to make way for the new. Nowhere in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is the failure of religion more clear than in the poem’s fifth and final section. The Lord’s Prayer is quoted in a chorus-like offset and then rearranged in the main text. The prayer’s failure is made clear not only in the way it is rearranged, but also through its pairing with a children’s nursery rhyme. It is as if the speaker finds as much solace in doggerel as in prayer. The substitution of one for the other is irrelevant; both are presented in the poem almost as if they are interchangeable. Religion’s failure can also be seen in the poem’s last line (and perhaps the poem’s main theme can be seen in it as well). Indeed, that the world ends in a whimper and not a dramatic or loud display seems to challenge popular religious beliefs regarding the apocalypse. It also once more sets forth that death is itself a failure—the unremarkable denouement at the end of a slow and unremarkable decline.
STYLE Allusion An allusion is a reference in a literary or artistic work to another literary or artistic work or to a real-world event or person. In this way, the work grounds itself in the world outside of itself. Instead of becoming a fictional and self-referential construction, an allusive work establishes itself as part of a greater conversation with the events and works it touches upon. For instance, the images of heaven and hell established by Dante are called upon in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ simply because the poem alludes to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Thus, Eliot is able to rely on and build upon the reader’s previous knowledge of fictional portrayals of heaven and hell without quoting them directly. At the same time, Eliot does directly quote the Lord’s Prayer though he does not cite it. This allusion further underscores the religious implications in the poem. The third allusion that can be found in Eliot’s poem is to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In particular, the second, third, and fourth stanzas of the fifth section mention the shadow that lies between theory and practice,
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movement and deed, and so forth. This construct is mentioned by Brutus in act 2, scene 1, lines 63– 65 of Shakespeare’s play. The last notable allusion in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is to Guy Fawkes Day. The holiday, on November 5, celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which was headed by Guy Fawkes. As part of the celebration, stuffed straw effigies of Fawkes are burned on bonfires. This image of straw men and their death is central to Eliot’s poem.
Repetition and Chorus Much of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ relies on repetition and chorus to underscore its most important images, metaphors, and themes. Descriptions of the straw men as empty yet full are repeated throughout the poem, as are descriptions of the afterlife as a desert. Images of dying stars and lines from the Lord’s Prayer also repeat. Notably, the reiterations in the poem often take on a choral or musical aspect, as is the case with the offset italicized lines in the final section. In fact, Eliot’s verse was well known for its musical qualities, specifically his later volume Four Quartets. The musical aspects in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ are particularly noticeable in the final two stanzas of the poem. In the penultimate stanza, each line consists of fragments from the three offset italicized lines that preceded it. The final stanza features three identical lines, all repeated in succession. This builds the tension and anticipation relieved by the poem’s final line. Ironically, that line states that the end will not deliver a grand finale, only a quiet sigh.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Modernism The modernist style developed in the early twentieth century and was at its most popular when ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ was released. Indeed, no discussion of modernism is complete without acknowledging Eliot’s place in it. The movement began in Europe before growing in popularity in the United States, but many of its leading literary figures, such as Eliot, Pound, and Gertrude Stein, were expatriates, Americans living abroad. The movement was not relegated to literature alone, as the visual arts were also an important aspect of the modernist aesthetic.
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1920s: Although World War I ended in 1918, Europe is still reeling from the effects, as great social, cultural, and political upheaval follows in its wake. The United States is affected as well, albeit to a lesser extent. Today: The Iraq War, spearheaded by the United States, begins in 2003. In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama declares that all troops will be withdrawn by 2011. Meanwhile, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan persists.
1920s: The modernist movement is at its peak, led by such poets as Eliot and Pound. Modernist poetry is characterized by a break from traditional poetic language, theme, and form.
one of the more cogent poetic styles of the day. A belated backlash against modernism and the movements that followed it, new formalism is characterized by the reemergence of traditional verse structures.
1920s: Existentialist philosophy is growing in popularity, and its cultural influence can be seen in the art and poetry of the day. Existential ideas regarding the individual as a being apart from society are reflected in the broken traditional art forms that defined modernism.
Today: While no one definitive poetic movement exists, new formalism has emerged as
Today: As is the case with poetry in the twenty-first century, no definitive philosophical movement exists. The most recent school of thought to emerge is poststructuralism, which was popular during the 1970s.
Several cultural and historical events influenced that aesthetic. At the beginning of the twentieth century, popular belief held that society as a whole was more important than the individual. However, this belief was soon challenged by advances in science and technology. In addition, World War I was the first major conflict in which machinery played a significant role, and the resulting casualties were the largest in recorded history. Thus, the high cost of patriotism and politics came into question, and philosophers and artists alike began to explore the rights of the individual. Rather than being seen as a part of the whole, as was the case previously, individual expression and experience suddenly became worthy of exploration in its own right.
society and man’s place in it. Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung explored the depths of the subconscious, revealing the very foundations of individual identity and its formation. In order to address these new ideas and beliefs, artists broke away from their traditional modes of expression in search of new styles, experimenting with both narrative and visual representations. In prose, straightforward narrative was replaced by stream-of-consciousness, a technique prominent in the works of Stein, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. In art, cubism, imagism, and surrealism evolved, and such styles can be found in Pablo Picasso’s work. In poetry, meter and structure were abandoned in favor of free verse. This can be seen in the work of H. D., William Carlos Williams, and W. H. Auden, among others.
This rather abstract shift in worldview can be seen concretely in the modernist movement, and in the philosophies that preceded it. Existentialist writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and his predecessor Friedrich Nietzsche questioned the nature of
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Impact of World War I and ‘‘The Lost Generation’’ Eliot traveled throughout Europe both before and during World War I, which occurred from
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Tumbleweed on a rural road (Image copyright Michael Ledray, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
1914 to 1918. His decision to settle in England was largely influenced by the war, as his British wife refused to travel overseas to the United States during the conflict. Civilian casualties during the war ultimately were estimated to be around 7 million, while almost 10 million soldiers were killed. The disaffected literature that was produced during and following the war reflects the world’s shock at these massive casualties. In fact, many American expatriate writers, like Eliot, felt these atrocities more keenly than their counterparts in the United States. Many of these writers later came to be known as part of ‘‘The Lost Generation,’’ a phrase that was coined by Gertrude Stein. Well-known writers typically assigned to this group include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos. Notably, although Eliot is not normally considered part of this group, Pound and Stein are. Certainly, the connection between World War I and the dark imagery in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is evident, as is Eliot’s connection to the literary and intellectual elite who came to be known as ‘‘The Lost Generation.’’
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CRITICAL OVERVIEW ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ was released at the height of Eliot’s career, and as such was met with a warm critical reception. Parts of the poem were released in some of Europe’s most prominent literary magazines, and thus its final publication was highly anticipated in literary circles. Additionally, the poem was Eliot’s first major work after the wild success of The Waste Land, and it was read and reviewed in light of that success. Notably, both poems contain similar imagery, language, and themes. In fact, critics have often referred to ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ as something of a sequel to its predecessor. Most contemporary criticism of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is devoted to attempts to analyze its many meanings, themes, and allusions. For instance, discussing the conundrum of Eliot’s near-constant allusive style in the poem, Yeats Eliot Review contributor Joseph Jonghyun Jeon states that ‘‘the intelligence of the ‘final’ section is . . . not found in profundity of statement; from this standpoint, the poem is not even original. Rather, the tone and affective register of this section are effects of style.’’ Jeon adds that ‘‘the
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strategies of arrangement and collage and the manner in which the poem assembles the borrowed fragments combine to represent a personal struggle. The language here simultaneously reveals and obscures. It cites other contexts by way of allusions, but treats them ambivalently, shedding innocence from the children’s song and reverence from the Lord’s Prayer fragment.’’ In a somewhat ambivalent review of the poem, Adam Kirsch writes in American Scholar that ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ provides a ‘‘vague, portentous thrill . . . But the extremity and drama . . . do not seem justified if what the poet is talking about is religious doubt.’’ Yet, Kirsch also notes that ‘‘Eliot evokes excitement and awe.’’ On the other hand, he also remarks that ‘‘the progress of Eliot’s poetry from ‘Prufrock’ to ‘The Hollow Men’ shows just this process: the sensitive adolescent sheds his humanity and becomes first a cynic, then a fevered nihilist.’’ Jeon, however, is far more forgiving in his assessment, finding that Eliot’s poem ‘‘offers shadowy expressions of extremely personal emotions’’ and ‘‘reveals the private Eliot through its style.’’ He states that ‘‘‘The Hollow Men’ is a profoundly personal poem without being an autobiographical one.’’ David Spurr, writing in Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Criticism, also proffers praise, commenting that ‘‘the quality of a poetic style marked by verbal austerity and relentless negation forms a structural counterpart to a thematic strategy that repudiates the validity of human experience at every level.’’
CRITICISM Leah Tieger Tieger is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she discusses interpretations of Eliot’s ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ as an autobiographical poem charting the poet’s religious struggles. Eliot was born into a family that was influential in the Unitarian Church. His grandfather was the founder of the Unitarian sect in St. Louis, Missouri, and his uncle founded the Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon. Yet, as Eliot matured, he rejected his family’s beliefs. For much of his early adulthood, Eliot lived without regard to organized religion, a choice that was supported by the modernist milieu in which he lived and worked. Personally, Eliot struggled to reconcile his intellect with his faith and, in 1927,
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at the age of thirty-nine, he was baptized in the Church of England. The move took place only two years after the final publication of ‘‘The Hollow Men.’’ Eliot’s decision to join the Church of England did not endear him to his family, or to his peers. Still, the period in which Eliot struggled with his spirituality also saw the production of three works that are not only religious in content, but also highly prized for their modernist aesthetic, namely, The Waste Land (1922), ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ (1925), and Ash-Wednesday (1930). In fact, numerous critics have commented on the thematic arc among the three works. According to David Spurr in Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Criticism, ‘‘‘The Hollow Men’ replaces the richly chaotic style of The Waste Land with an austerity of expression that prepares for the contemplative mode of AshWednesday.’’ Though a great deal of critical attention is paid to the numerous allusions in ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ much attention is also directed toward the poems personal and autobiographical aspects, specifically in regard to its religious content. Even without considering Eliot’s personal spiritual journey, the religious tone, content, and imagery in the poem are well worth remaking upon. Quotations from the Lord’s Prayer are obviously religious, as are allusions to Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Yet, the latter does bear some additional exploration. Dante’s work is arguably the source of contemporary conceptions of heaven, hell, and purgatory, and Eliot uses these concepts to great effect. The afterlife that Eliot describes is a desert without eyes, watched over by fading stars, replete with crumbling statues and mouths unable to kiss. All of these images take on a quality distinctly reminiscent of Dante’s purgatory. Given the belief that souls in purgatory will ultimately be allowed to enter heaven, the idea that Eliot portrays purgatory in the poem is bolstered by the speakers’ claim that there is another afterlife, and that there is a final meeting that comes after what would already appear to have been the final meeting. The absence of eyes in the afterlife, though not an explicitly religious image, is one that many critics have remarked upon in the discussion of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ as a religious poem. Indeed, according to J. Hillis Miller in Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers, ‘‘there are no eyes in the hollow valley, and the empty men are bereft of God.’’ In fact, Hillis even goes on to indicate that the absence of eyes in the poem is meant to
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
Modernist poetry paved the way for contemporary poetry; both break traditional forms and topics and tend toward free verse. For an anthology of contemporary poetry specifically geared toward young adults, read The Invisible Ladder: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poems for Young Readers, edited by Liz Rosenberg. Published in 1996, the volume includes verse from such notable contemporary poets as Stanley Kunitz, Rita Dove, and Galway Kinnell. The poets also include introductions to their own poems, as well as photographs of themselves as both adults and children. The 1999 book T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life, by Lyndall Gordon, combines two of Gordon’s earlier biographies of the poet, Eliot’s Early Years (1977) and Eliot’s New Life (1988). In addition to presenting a straightforward account of Eliot’s life, Gordon explores Eliot’s anti-Semitic beliefs and misogynist tendencies and attempts to reconcile them with the poet’s legendary talent. Originally published in 1958, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has become a classic young adult novel that also appeals to adults. Just as ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ centers on the death of the old as it makes way for the new, so does Achebe’s novel. The plot centers around a Nigerian village and the changes it undergoes in the face of colonialism. Indeed, for both Eliot and Achebe, the death of the
signify the absence of the divine gaze. Supporting the idea that the speakers are in purgatory, the critic also finds that ‘‘Eliot’s hollow men understand dimly that if they endure the death which is prelude to rebirth they have some hope of salvation.’’ Yeats Eliot Review contributor Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, however, declares just the opposite: ‘‘When the hollow men look to the stars for evidence of divinity and the hope of salvation, they
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old is a necessary mode of progress. Yet, both writers seem to acknowledge that change can be both positive and negative.
Volume 2 of The New Anthology Of American Poetry: Modernisms, 1900–1950, edited by Steven Gould Axelrod, Camille Roman, and Thomas Travisano includes the work of sixtyfive American modernist poets, including Eliot, Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and Langston Hughes.
A contemporary and friend of Eliot’s, the artist Pablo Picasso was as much a revolutionary in his field as Eliot was in his. For a retrospective of his work, read Picasso: 200 Masterworks from 1898 to 1972. The volume was edited by Bernard Ruiz Picasso and Bernice B. Rose and published in 2001.
Another book that will appeal to both young adult and mature readers is Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical novel Night. The story follows Eliezer, a teenage Hungarian Jew who survives the Holocaust. Though the book was first published in French in 1958, the horrific events it describes are not dissimilar to the dark imagery in Eliot’s poem. Furthermore, Wiesel’s protagonist struggles to reconcile his belief in God with the horror he witnesses. This death of God is a common theme in modernist literature, one that is similar to the themes in ‘‘The Hollow Men.’’
see only more emptiness in places that resemble their own too much to offer any solace. The poem is too committed to demarcating a ground for meaning that the absent divine figure cannot provide.’’ Indeed, Jeon goes on to state that ‘‘Eliot makes clear that the hollow men have no agency, and hence are incapable of self-sacrifice. It is central to the poem’s project to render such a place as heaven as either inaccessible and inconceivable or
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proximate, and thus unable to live up to any promise of transcendence.’’ The impossibility of heaven in the poem, to Jeon, is evidenced by sections one through four, which he describes as an ‘‘attempt to accord human thought as figured by the hollow men with orthodox belief.’’ Yet, Jeon finds that ‘‘the available structures ultimately fold in on themselves. The failure of the many binary differences in these sections also means the impossibility of salvation because an ideal place like heaven and a divine figure become unimaginable.’’ Certainly, it would seem that religion in Eliot’s poem is a dead thing, one that must pass away in order to make room for the new. Yet, Hillis disagrees with this interpretation, observing that ‘‘though nature, other people, and God have an almost entirely negative existence in the poem, they do exist as something outside the hollow men.’’ To Hillis, this distinction imbues ‘‘nature, other people, and God’’ with at least one redeeming quality. Regardless, religion’s impotence seems to be further indicated in the poem’s final section. The juxtaposition (the placing side by side) of the Lord’s Prayer with a children’s nursery rhyme is a compelling example of this impotence. Another such example can be found in the poem’s final line, which asserts that the apocalypse will come quietly, that no grand display heralding the end of the world will be forthcoming. To Jeon, however, this line need not be taken at face value. He states that ‘‘the hollow men try unsuccessfully to imagine the existence of a divine and a world that depend on such a figure and, accordingly, their voices fail to register in any effective manner.’’ This failure, then, evokes the whispers referred to in the final lines. Even more remarkably, Jeon declares that Eliot ‘‘treats whimpers, not as meaningless utterances that vanish in the abyss between heaven and earth, but as shadowy murmurs that have no meaning until they are considered in relation to one other.’’ He adds: ‘‘The key is scale. A whimper among gods is a meaningless sound: a whimper among whimpers is a language.’’ It is hard to say whether Hillis or Jeon are correct in their varying interpretations; the poem’s ambiguous and ambivalent nature implies many possible or plausible meanings. However, Jeon is perhaps most eloquent in his assessment. He finds that ‘‘whimpers for Eliot in this poem carry the force of bangs. Whimpers in the end are not retreats.’’ Indeed, if ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ provides any solution to the question of religion,
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Jeon asserts: ‘‘The answer that this poem provides is that prayer without God is poetry.’’ Source: Leah Tieger, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Troy Urquhart In the following review, Urquhart discusses the interconnection of contrasting ideas in the poem. In T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ the speaker searches for meaning but ultimately fails to strike a balance between the physical world and the abstract. Throughout the poem, the speaker’s quest is hindered by his inability to reconcile this existence with ‘‘death’s other Kingdom,’’ his idea of the afterlife. The poem presents the search for meaning in terms of motion between opposing spheres of existence, yet the speaker’s inability to find an acceptable truth creates an image of frustrated inertia. The kinetic images created by Eliot’s speaker are immobile, and their tension becomes more pronounced as the poem progresses, emphasizing the speaker’s growing dissatisfaction and mental imbalance. Although images of suppressed motion are present in the first section, the images create a passive, rather than an active, tone. In the first two lines, Eliot’s speaker introduces himself by using the first person plural ‘‘We’’ (1,2), which not only indicates the association of other people with the speaker’s situation but also suggests a duplicity of character within the mind of the speaker similar to that in Eliot’s ‘‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’’ The image of ‘‘hollow men’’ (1) who are ‘‘Leaning together’’ (3) is one of immobility. ‘‘Leaning’’ denotes the application of force, but force directed toward a central point and merely providing self-support. The balance of such an arrangement also suggests that it is precarious: should one part change the force with which it leans, the arrangement is likely to collapse. If the speaker’s ‘‘We’’ is interpreted as different aspects of one person, the image suggests mental stability that is maintained only through the careful balance of different personas. The ‘‘Paralysed force, gesture without motion’’ (12) confirms this image, for energy is expended without visible result. Further, people who have ‘‘crossed / [. . .] to death’s other Kingdom’’ (13–14) do not remember the speaker’s ‘‘We’’ ‘‘as lost / Violent souls’’ (15–16), but ‘‘As the hollow men / The stuffed men’’ (17–18). The kinetic energy of this scene is directed inward, and the description of nonviolence suggests that the
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motion goes unnoticed by those outside the speaker’s ‘‘We.’’ Throughout the first section of the poem, the speaker’s efforts are directed inward and are therefore ‘‘meaningless’’ (7) because they do not influence the outside world. In the concluding section of the poem, the images of suppressed action reach an almost irrepressible level as the speaker searches for meaning. Through the recitation of rhyme, the speaker returns to his childhood to seek relief from the building tension, but his childhood is a perverted one. In the traditional children’s rhyme, the speaker substitutes ‘‘the prickly pear’’ (68) for the mulberry bush, and this substitution connects this section to the ‘‘cactus land’’ (40). Even though the childhood rhyme brings a melodic, chanting rhythm to the poem, the implication that the speaker’s childhood resembles the ‘‘prickly’’ cactus rather than the sweet mulberry is unavoidable. The circular motion ‘‘round the prickly pear’’ (68) reiterates the theme of effort without result. It also builds the level of activity: motion has progressed through ‘‘leaning’’ (3), ‘‘swinging’’ (24), ‘‘trembling’’ (49), and ‘‘grop[ing]’’ (58) to the image of a child dancing or running. The reference to the Lord’s Prayer in section 5 (‘‘For Thine is the Kingdom’’ [77,91]) is in sharp contrast to the motion of the child’s rhyme: whereas the rhyme suggests activity, the Lord’s Prayer creates an image of kneeling and meditation. Although the contrast of prayer with childhood activity suggests a comparison of contemplation with action, it also implies that the speaker’s childhood has become an internal force in his search for meaning. The Lord’s Prayer also connects the concluding section to ‘‘The supplication of a dead man’s hand’’ in section 3 (43) and therefore suggests that the speaker views himself as dead or dying. The speaker intertwines pairs of contrasting ideas with these lines, emphasizing the conflict of repressed motion. Through the repetition of ‘‘Falls the Shadow’’ (76,82,90), the ‘‘Shadow’’ becomes the pervading image of the last section, and it suggests something undefined, connecting to ‘‘Shape without form, shade without colour’’ (11). As an indeterminate image, the ‘‘Shadow’’ is neither ‘‘the idea’’ (72) nor ‘‘the reality’’ (73), neither ‘‘the potency’’ (86) nor ‘‘the existence’’ (87), but rather something between the abstract and the physical. It suggests that the speaker vacillates between contrasting interpretations of reality in the search for a balance that exists only outside both the physical and the abstract spheres.
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In the final lines of the poem, the energy of the speaker implodes. The thrice repeated line ‘‘This is the way the world ends’’ (95–97), recalls both the chanting of the Lord’s Prayer and the children’s rhyme and creates an image of stagnation, for although the speaker searches for meaning in the lines, he fails to achieve motion. The inner balance suggested by the ‘‘Leaning’’ figures of the first section is lost in the final line, as the poem ends ‘‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’’ The kinetic energy that begins ‘‘quiet and meaningless’’ (7) increases during the poem and peaks in the utterance of the word ‘‘bang.’’ The increase in the tension of suppressed motion suggests that the speaker’s agitation and mental imbalance increase as the work progresses. However, the speaker remains nonviolent (15–16) even in his state of mental collapse, for he denies the explosion of energy that ‘‘a bang’’ would denote, choosing instead to conclude the world—and the work—with an implosive ‘‘whimper.’’ Source: Troy Urquhart, ‘‘Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 59, No. 4, Summer 2001, pp. 199–202.
Michele Valerie Ronnick In the following essay, the literary allusions in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ are identified. Scholars have long endeavored to identify the sources of various images in T. S. Eliot’s work, so densely layered with literary allusions. As Eliot himself noted in his essay ‘‘Philip Massinger’’ (1920), One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
In Eliot’s poem ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ several sources have been posited for the ‘‘hollow men . . . the stuffed men / leaning together . . . filled with straw’’ (lines 1–2). B. C. Southam notes three: that the ‘‘hollow . . . stuffed men’’ are reminiscent of the effigies burned in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day; that ‘‘according to Valerie Eliot, the poet had in mind the marionette in Stravinsky’s Petrouchka’’; and finally, that the ‘‘straw-stuffed effigies are associated with harvest rituals celebrating the death of the fertility god or Fisher King.’’ In 1963, some years before Southam’s summary, John Vickery had proffered an interpretation similar to the third point mentioned. He noted that ‘‘the opening lines of ‘The Hollow Men’ with their image of straw-filled creatures,
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recalls The Golden Bough’s account of the strawman who represents the dead spirit of fertility that revives in the spring when the apple trees begin to blossom.’’ Whereas Eliot may well have had any or all of these ideas in mind, I suggest that there is yet another connection to be made, namely between Eliot’s ‘‘hollow . . . stuffed men’’ and the Roman ritual of the Argei. In 1922, a few years before Eliot wrote ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ W. Warde Fowler described the particulars of this ritual, which was to him a ‘‘fascinating puzzle’’ and ‘‘the first curiosity that enticed’’ him ‘‘into the study of Roman religion,’’ in his book Roman Religious Experience. The rite according to Fowler occurs each year on the ides of May, which is in my view rather magical than religious, though the ancients themselves looked upon it as a kind of purification, [namely] the casting into the Tiber from the Pons Sublicius of twenty-four or twenty-seven straw puppets by the Vestal Virgins in the presence of the magistrates and pontifices. Recently an attempt has been made by Wissowa to prove that this strange ceremony was not primitive, but simply a case of substitution of puppets for real human victims as late as the age of the Punic wars. These puppets were called Argei, which naturally suggests Greeks; and Wissowa has contrived to persuade himself not only that a number of Greeks were actually put to death by drowning in an age when everything Greek was beginning to be reverenced at Rome, but (still more extraordinary to an anthropologist) that the primitive device of substitution was had in requisition at that late date in order to carry on the memory of that ghastly deed. And the world of German learning has silently followed their leader, without taking the trouble to test his conclusions . . . whatever be the history of the accessories of the rite—and they are various and puzzling,—that actual immersion of the puppets is the survival of a primitive piece of sympathetic magic, the object being possibly to procure rain.
Fowler’s contemporary Sir James Frazer, whose work The Golden Bough greatly influenced Eliot, pointed to aspects of the ritual of purification in river water involved in the rite of the Argei. He observed that it is possible that the puppets made of rushes, which in the month of May the pontiffs and Vestal Virgins annually threw into the Tiber from the old Sublician bridge at Rome had originally the same significance [as the Roman festival Compitalia]; that is, they may have been designed to purge the city from demoniac influence by diverting the attention of the demons
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from human beings to the puppets and then toppling the whole uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which would soon sweep them far out to sea. . . This interpretation of the Roman custom is supported to some extent by the evidence of Plutarch, who speaks of the ceremony as ‘‘the greatest of purifications.’’
Frazer also noted that as far as he could ‘‘see, there is little or nothing to suggest that the ceremony had anything to do with vegetation,’’ and instead he suggested that the Argei ‘‘may have been offerings to the River God, to pacify him.’’ This motif of sacrificial separation and collective departure at a river’s edge then provides a clear thematic link between the ‘‘hollow . . . stuffed men,’’ who are ‘‘gathered on this beach of the tumid river / sightless’’ (lines 60–61), and the blind, featureless Argei ready to be tossed away by Roman officials standing on the Tiber’s banks. The ‘‘tumid river’’ suggests not only Dante’s River Acheron and the souls gathered nearby, as noted by Martin Scofield, but also the waters of Rome’s greatest river. For the river into which twentyfour or twenty-seven Argei were hurled on an annual basis was swollen in mid May with spring run-off. In Rome the ritualized murder of these straw hominids served to absorb evil forces, which rendered them accursed and profane. In Eliot’s poem the stuffed men anxiously implore the reader, and ‘‘those who have crossed . . . to death’s other kingdom’’ (13–14), to ‘‘remember us—if at all—not as lost / violent souls, but only / as the hollow men / the stuffed men’’ (15–18). Thus the small crowd of rush-stuffed Roman mannikins, who are as clonelike and uniform in their aspect as Scofield once described ‘‘the hollow men,’’ find their destiny bound up with a riverside community. Source: Michele Valerie Ronnick, ‘‘Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 56, No. 2, Winter 1998, pp. 91–92.
Charles Sanders In the following essay, Sanders illustrates the connection between ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ and Heart of Darkness. T. S. Eliot has openly acknowledged the influence of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness on ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ by means of his epigraph, ‘‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’’ The poet has possibly imbibed something more of Conrad in the body of the poem, specifically in the famous conclusion, ‘‘This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper’’ (Collected Poems 1901– 1962; New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
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1963). For if we turn to the final scene of Marlow’s monologue, in which Marlow lies to Kurtz’s Intended, we find him saying, ‘‘It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle’’ (New York: New American Library, 1950; p. 157). Of course, we recognize Conrad’s meaning immediately: a lie, for Marlow, is tainted with mortality; literally as well as symbolically he carries the sinful burden of Kurtz on his back; in that burden he accedes to his personal mortality. To the wealth of meanings already extracted from Eliot’s passage—and without doing violence to any of them—we may now add a further insight: ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ though clearly a contrast to both Marlow and Kurtz (and Guy Fawkes), inherit the double burden. Reduced to childish inarticulation (‘‘For Thine is/Life is/For Thine is the’’), they can only sputter their accession in the repetitive rhythm of the nursery or Mother Goose rhyme, ‘‘This is the way we wash.’’ They may avert their eyes; they may wear, like the Harlequin, ‘‘deliberate disguises’’; they may ‘‘avoid speech’’; but nothing can ‘‘wash’’ away their knowledge, direct or implied, of Kurtz or Marlow. Neither will the house collapse, nor the heavens fall, ‘‘with a bang’’; the only sound is the ‘‘whimper’’ of a perennially repetitive ‘‘papier-mache ˆ ´ Mephistopheles,’’ the all too mortal whimper that the silent wash of the Thames, Congo, or Styx does not obliterate so much as enhance. Source: Charles Sanders, ‘‘Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 38, No. 4, Summer 1980, pp. 8–9.
Everett A. Gillis, Lawrence A. Ryan, and Friedrich W. Strothmann In the following essay, the authors discuss opposing views of the significance of Eliot’s use of the word ‘‘empty’’ in ‘‘The Hollow Men.’’ I
The conventional interpretation of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ as little more than an extension in mood and imagery of The Waste Land has recently been challenged by Frederich W. Strothmann and Lawrence V. Ryan, who contend in ‘‘Hope for T. S. Eliot’s ‘Empty Men’’’ (PMLA, XXXII [September 1958], 426–432) that the poem represents, rather, a transitional stage between Eliot’s earlier Waste-Land poems and his later, more affirmative, work: ‘‘a long step toward the
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IN SPITE OF ELIOT’S AVOWED AND DEMONSTRATED INTEREST IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POETRY AND MUSIC, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS THE POEM CAN NOT BE CRITICIZED IN MUSICAL TERMS.’’
Four Quartets rather than a very short step out of The Waste Land’’ (p. 227 n). Their argument rests ultimately on a special interpretation of the word ‘‘empty’’ in the lines ‘‘The hope only / Of empty men,’’ which critics heretofore have taken simply as a synonym for ‘‘hollow,’’ the epithet applied earlier to the inhabitants of the limbo depicted in the poem. The word ‘‘empty’’ is to be read in the light of the doctrine of the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross that the soul in its upward journey toward salvation must pass through a spiritual state of absolute quiescence, in which it empties itself—even of hope— as a prelude toward a more active striving. For Professors Strothmann and Ryan, then, the word ‘‘empty’’ signifies a state of grace which though extremely low in the scale, is yet a step forward, and the ‘‘empty’’ men consequently find themselves ‘‘journeying through the delectable desert of purgation’’ (p. 432) that will end at long last in heaven. If one grants their interpretation of ‘‘empty,’’ Professors Strothmann and Ryan make an excellent case for their view that the poem ends affirmatively, with a degree of hope for the hollow men. But there are several reasons for disagreeing both with the meaning they assign to ‘‘empty’’ and their conclusion that the poem ends on a ‘‘positive note.’’ The first of these is the basic situation presented in the poem itself, a situation which effectively militates against any possibility of spiritual progress by the hollow men: that of a modern limbo in which exist souls entirely void of spiritual meaning. For the scene and imagery of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is based upon the third canto of Dante’s Inferno, which describes a desolate plain lying between Hell’s portal and the river Acheron on which a horde of souls pursue a whirling banner round and round. Because of their miserable condition, says Virgil to Dante—for on earth above they had been neither good nor evil—mercy and
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justice both scorn them. Thus, totally without spiritual reality, they must remain forever on the plain, barred from crossing over the river (as those ‘‘lost / Violent souls’’ have already done, whose evil has at least a negative spiritual validity) to receive punishment in Hell or reward in Heaven. They are thus, in Eliot’s phrase, hollow men: in terms of spiritual value, ‘‘Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion,’’ groping together, avoiding speech, on the beach of ‘‘the tumid river.’’ In such a state, there is obviously no possibility of spiritual movement or progression such as that vouchsafed Dante, who does cross beyond Acheron, traversing Hell and Purgatory, observing, in the Garden of Eden at the top of the Mount of Purgatory, the triumphal procession of the Church, which causes the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil at its approach to burst into bloom to the accompaniment of hymns. There he likewise sees the eyes of Beatrice reflecting like a mirror the shifting image of a griffin whose alternate forms represent respectively the human and the divine natures of Christ; and he is then carried by Beatrice into Paradise to behold the ranks of the redeemed through which shines God’s trinal light—‘‘which in a single star / Givest them all such rapture.’’ These visions, contained in the Purgatorio, Cantos XXX–XXXI and the Paradiso, Canto XXXI, are obviously the source of the details of Sections II through IV of ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ though perceived by the hollow men only in a feeble and hallucinatory fashion: Beatrice’s eyes reflecting the changing image of Christ seeming like ‘‘Sunlight on a broken column’’; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, ‘‘a tree swinging,’’ i.e., like a wavering illusion; the hymns sung at the Tree’s flowering, as indistinct as the singing of the wind’s voice. But even whatever of spiritual validity might possibly exist in such a distorted version of Dante’s real and effectual vision is still unavailable to the hollow men, for they lack even a vestige of the necessary spiritual capacity to apprehend it. The question of hope in the poem, then, is purely ironic. The spiritual situation suggested in the poem is further emphasized by the poem’s structure, which is essentially that of a musical composition. Eliot himself in his essay ‘‘The Music of Poetry’’ suggests an analogy between the structure of music and the structure of poetry, and it may easily be demonstrated that The Waste Land, which immediately precedes ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ as well as the later Four Quartets, follows a sonatalike structure. ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ however, is
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more of a musical suite, consisting of a series of recitatives and choruses spoken or chanted respectively by the hollow-man leader—the ‘‘I’’ of the poem—and the chorus of hollow men. Controlled specifically by a musical logic, the poem presents its central concept thematically rather than by typical dramatic or narrative methods in which one force tends to triumph over another. The theme of spiritual impotence is initiated in the first movement of the poem by its vivid portrayal of the spiritual emptiness of the hollow men; it is further developed in the three middle movements, which depict the pitiable plight of the prophet or modern Dante in the contemporary world, and the total decadence to which religion has fallen; and is climaxed in the last by a grotesque parody of those formal ritualistic elements associated with the phenomenon of worship. There is thus in the poem, because of the thematic repetition within the different contexts provided by the individual movements, only a deeper concentration on the basic motif of impotence, and hence no form of spiritual progression such as that visualized by Professors Strothmann and Ryan. The presence in the poem of the elements of hope—the ‘‘perpetual star / Multifoliate rose’’—may seem strange at first sight in a poem so thoroughly devoted to the theme of religious impotency. Yet it has an appropriate role if considered in terms of the musical logic of the poem, namely that of counterpoint. This aspect of musical technique is mentioned by Eliot in his analogy between music and poetry already cited. As counterpoint, the element of hope serves merely by musical contrast to reinforce the basic theme of spiritual inadequacy featured in the poem as a whole. In addition to the arguments just presented for viewing ‘‘empty’’ as a synonym for ‘‘hollow’’ rather than as a state of grace leading to a positive spiritual condition on the part of the hollow men, we may examine two items of extrinsic evidence supporting the same conclusion. The first of these is Eliot’s notable sensitivity with respect to words. His skill in this field is widely recognized by critics; but let us look at a particular example of his selective process at work. In a letter to Ezra Pound in 1922 relative to Pound’s excisions of the Waste Land manuscript (included in The Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige [New York, 1950], pp. 170–172), Eliot expresses concern regarding a passage which in the final published form of the poem contains the line ‘‘And if it rains, a closed car at four’’ (l. 136). Apparently Pound had made a suggestion regarding the word
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‘‘taxi,’’ for Eliot replies: ‘‘A closed car. I can’t use taxi more than once.’’ ‘‘A closed car’’ here is, of course, the inevitable, right word, as ‘‘taxi’’ is in the lines ‘‘When the human engine waits / Like a taxi throbbing waiting’’ (ll. 216–217). It should be admitted here that word repetition does occur in Eliot’s verse, but invariably for a special effect. As a matter of fact, ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ itself contains repetition in its opening section, which begins ‘‘We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men’’ and which closes ‘‘As the hollow men / The stuffed men.’’ But as anyone can recognize it is the result of deliberate intention: for the refrain-like quality of the last two lines brings the section to a fitting close. The other item of evidence is a passage in The Waste Land that almost exactly parallels the concluding portion of Section IV of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ which contains the lines Professors Strothmann and Ryan make so much of. This is a passage in the first section of The Waste Land stressing the desolate quality of the waste land landscape: ‘‘What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?’’ After several such lines of descriptive detail, a note of hope is suddenly interjected: Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock); but one immediately realizes that the comfort promised is not what one has expected—i.e., relief from the heat and glare of the desert—but ‘‘fear in a handful of dust.’’ The passage is manifestly ironical, and few critics would suggest that any real benefit has been derived by the waste landers from the promise of shadow under the red rock. Logically, the passage in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ has the same ironic implications. In much the same manner as the promise of relief in The Waste Land is metamorphosized into symbols of desolation and death—‘‘fear in a handful of dust,’’ the ‘‘hope only / Of empty men’’ in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ is followed by a mordant parody on a service of worship. On the whole, it seems highly probable that Eliot meant the word ‘‘empty’’ to be taken for nothing more than a synonym for hollowness and the degree of grace evident in the limbo of the hollow men as an ironic quality used for rhetorical purposes only. II
Everett Gillis rests his criticism of our article, ‘‘Hope for T. S. Eliot’s ‘Empty Men’,’’ upon two
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assumptions that are subject to challenge: he treats the structure of ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ as ‘‘essentially that of a musical composition,’’ and he suggests it was simply the author’s ‘‘notable sensitivity with respect to words’’ that prevented his repeating the word ‘‘hollow’’ at the end of the fourth section. To support both contentions, he adduces external evidence that appears a` propos until one attempts to measure it against the actual text of the poem. He would regard the work, first of all, as a sonata-like composition, with choral group and leader chanting ‘‘a series of recitatives and choruses’’ in which the theme of religious impotence is presented by musical, ‘‘rather than by typical dramatic or narrative methods.’’ In returning to the text, however, one discovers that the so-called ‘‘leader,’’ the ‘‘I,’’ appears only in Section II. If the poem were a true exercise in thematic variation or musical counterpoint, the ‘‘leader’’ might have been expected to speak at least once more, most appropriately in Section IV. The fact that the ‘‘I’’ occurs only in this one instance and is thereafter dropped suggests, especially if one (rightly) accepts Professor Gillis’s contention that Eliot is always meticulous in his use of language, some probable significance in the nonce appearance of an individual speaker. Since we do not find him where he might reasonably be expected to turn up again, it seems quite proper to ask why an apparent ‘‘leader’’ of this supposed chorus of grotesques should appear at all. Without reverting to the discussion of the piecemeal composition of the work, one may note that the ‘‘I’’ occurs only in that section which critics have agreed emphasizes most strongly the unwillingness of the hollow men to confront reality. Professor Gillis himself brings out the ‘‘hallucinatory’’ effect created by Eliot’s choice of symbols for the unwanted spiritual fulfillment hinted at in Section II. The ‘‘deliberate disguises’’ and the wish to be ‘‘no nearer’’ may indicate that the ‘‘I’’ serves a peculiar purpose in this passage. For it is within this section that the hollow self protests most strongly against making the effort to approach a spiritual reality of which it is dimly aware but which it can not really desire so long as the soul remains in its present distracted state. The self can not actually want spiritual fulfillment so long as it refuses to purge itself of its false desires (‘‘disguises,’’ as they are called in the poem). If Eliot is employing thematic contrast or counterpoint, it would seem to consist rather in a brilliant playing of the egocentric hopelessness of the hollow ‘‘I’’ in
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the second section against the later hint in Section IV that by overcoming concern for self, the soul can be emptied of its vain longings in preparation for the eventual encounter with spiritual reality. Hence, the contrast between Sections II and IV suggests a development of, rather than a variation upon, the theme with which the poem begins. The strong emphasis upon the symbolical ‘‘eyes,’’ moreover, serves to sharpen this same contrast. Naturally the unprepared, ‘‘hollow’’ speaker of Section II dares not meet the eyes. In his unready state the spiritual realities can not appear except as painful experience or as vague hallucinations. Yet the poem does not say that because they appear fragmentary and unrealized to the unreceptive soul, these spiritual experiences are merely hallucinatory. The complaint of the chorus in the fourth section that ‘‘The eyes are not here,’’ that without the eyes ‘‘We grope together / And avoid speech,’’ makes it apparent that the ‘‘eyes’’ symbolize a reality positively and truly to be desired. The obvious analogy between the hollow men and Dante’s ‘‘Trimmers’’ (Inferno, Canto III) need not stand as an obstacle to seeing a glimmer of hope in this climactic section of the poem. A distinction must be made between Dante’s and Eliot’s ‘‘lost’’ spirits. The Trimmers are dead and without hope in fact; irrevocably they have made ‘‘the great refusal’’ and must remain ‘‘sightless’’ (void of spiritual understanding and fulfillment) forever. The hollow men, though they appear to be destined to a similar end, are nevertheless still alive, are not yet damned. Their present plight is miserable, and if they continue in their despairing state, it promises to be their eternal lot. But in the word ‘‘unless’’ lies their hope; there is a possibility that the ‘‘eyes’’ will reappear provided the necessary condition is met. The necessary condition is that they first take the step, as must all who hope to come to the beatific vision, from hollowness to emptiness. Eliot’s echoes of Dante in this passage require any critic of the poem to ask yet another question. ‘‘Why should ‘The Hollow Men’ apparently embody the same disapproving attitude toward Trimmers as one finds in the Commedia unless, as far as the poet is concerned, some positive value inheres in whatever it is that the Trimmers have refused?’’ If it is bad, or unfortunate, to be a Trimmer or a Trimmer-like hollow man, then must he be fortunate, and certainly not a vain dreamer, who can attain what those undone souls cannot hope to
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possess. The ‘‘perpetual star’’ and the ‘‘Multifoliate rose’’ must symbolize, for Eliot as for Dante, not a vague, illusory dream of fulfillment, but something truly worth having. It seems unlikely that in this passage Eliot should have accepted the values Dante gives to one set of symbols (the Trimmers) without accepting those he attaches to the other (the eyes, the multifoliate rose). Nor does Professor Gillis’s argument that Eliot is careful not to repeat words except ‘‘invariably for a special effect’’ satisfactorily explain the single appearance in the poem of the word ‘‘empty.’’ The statement is, in the first place, highly questionable. One may point, for instance, to Eliot’s practice in ‘‘Ash Wednesday’’ of repeating words, phrases, images, often with variations that are slight but full of significance. Granted, these are ‘‘special effects’’; yet it is difficult to see why ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ should be denied the privilege of embodying similar special effects. The appearance of the word ‘‘hollow’’ at both the beginning and the end (reinforced by the word ‘‘stuffed’’ at the end) of Section I is, moreover, not the only occurrence of functional repetition in the poem. In Section II a similar effect is created by the haunting repetition of the phrase ‘‘no nearer.’’ One may raise a more direct objection, however, to the claim that Eliot meticulously avoids repetition wherever he can find an equally suitable synonym. The example of ‘‘taxi—car’’ from The Waste Land may not be called in as a proper analogy to ‘‘hollow— empty’’ in the later work. The choice between ‘‘car’’ and ‘‘taxi,’’ in the lines cited, while an important esthetic matter, is not crucial within the total context of the poem. Eliot’s good taste in substituting ‘‘car’’ in the line in question is evident. Yet The Waste Land would have produced much the same effect as a work of art even if the author had followed Ezra Pound’s advice on this minor point. In reading ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ on the other hand, understanding of the relationship between the words ‘‘hollow’’ and ‘‘empty’’ is essential. We agree with Professor Gillis upon Eliot’s exquisite sense of words as well as his skill at repetition, often with slight but subtle variation, for special effects. If, then, the repetition of ‘‘hollow men . . . stuffed men’’ in Section I is effective, why should the author have rejected the word ‘‘hollow’’ at the end of Section IV? It should be noted that the richly suggestive phrase ‘‘hollow valley’’ appears in the same passage. If the author had simply wished to avoid four occurrences of the word
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‘‘hollow’’ in the poem, why do we not find here ‘‘empty valley’’ and ‘‘hollow men’’? Our discussion earlier in this paper of Eliot’s use of Dante’s symbolical Trimmers, perpetual star, and multifoliate rose should provide an answer and at the same time free us, we hope, of any charge of begging the question. From the context, the ‘‘hollow’’ speakers associate something positive and greatly to be desired (the ‘‘Multifoliate rose’’) with the condition of ‘‘emptiness.’’ Clearly it is something that hollow men are not capable of enjoying. As we insisted in our original article, the thematic development of the poem is made truly effective by the sharp contrast between the despairing repetition of ‘‘hollow men . . . stuffed men’’ in Section I, and the sudden, startling revelation of a possible way out of the dilemma for ‘‘empty men’’ at the critical moment in Section IV. None of the objections of Professor Gillis adds weight to the conventional interpretation of the poem which our article has called into question. In spite of Eliot’s avowed and demonstrated interest in the relationship between poetry and music, in the final analysis the poem can not be criticized in musical terms. No more may the Four Quartets, even though the attempt in these later works to draw upon principles of musical composition is evident. The quality and meaning of Eliot’s language and imagery, apart from which the rhythmic and harmonic patterns may not be judged without doing violence to his work, are what really matter in his, or in any other writer’s poems. In ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ we still contend, the author carefully orders the language, imagery, and harmonies into sharp contrasts so as to make clear that in hollowness lies despair, but that emptiness is a condition of hope. Source: Everett A. Gillis, Lawrence A. Ryan, and Friedrich W. Strothmann, ‘‘Hope for Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’?,’’ in PMLA, Vol. 75, No. 5, December 1960, pp. 635–38.
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Bush, Ronald, ‘‘T. S. Eliot’s Life and Career,’’ in Modern American Poetry Review, http://www.english.illinois.edu/ maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm (accessed July 20, 2009), originally published in American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, Oxford University Press, 1999. Eliot, T. S., ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ in Collected Poems, 1909–1962, Harcourt, 1991, pp. 77–82. Flynn, Thomas, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2006. Fraser, Antonia, Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, Anchor, 1997. Jeon, Joseph Jonghyun, ‘‘Eliot Shadows: Autography and Style in ‘The Hollow Men,’’’ in Yeats Eliot Review, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter 2007, p. 12. Keegan, John, The First World War, Vintage, 2000. Kirsch, Adam, ‘‘Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot,’’ in American Scholar, Vol. 67, No. 3, Summer 1998, p. 65. Link, Arthur Stanley, The Impact of World War I, HarperCollins, 1969. Marshall, S. L. A., World War I, Mariner Books, 2001. Marwick, Arthur, The Impact of World War I: Total War and Social Change; Europe 1914–1945, Open University Worldwide, 2001. Miller, J. Hillis, Review of ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ in Modern American Poetry Review, http://www.english.illinois.edu/ maps/poets/a_f/eliot/hollow.htm (accessed July 20, 2009), originally published in Poets of Reality: Six TwentiethCentury Writers, Harvard University Press, 1965. Monk, Craig, Writing the Lost Generation: Expatriate Autobiography and American Modernism, University Of Iowa Press, 2008. Shakespeare, William, Julius Caesar, Barron’s Educational Series, 2001. Spurr, David, Review of ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ in the Modern American Poetry Review, http://www.english.illinois. edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/hollow.htm (accessed July 20, 2009), originally published in Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Criticism, University of Illinois Press, 1984. Whitworth, Michael H. ed., Modernism, Blackwell, 2007.
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FURTHER READING
Armstrong, Tim, Modernism: A Cultural History, Polity, 2005. Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930, Penguin, 1978. Brooker, Jewel Spears, ‘‘T. S. Eliot,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 329, Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 1: Agnon-Eucken, Thomson Gale, 2007, pp. 402–21.
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Marino, Gordon, ed., Basic Writings of Existentialism, Modern Library Classics, 2004. Existentialist philosophy was highly influential to the modernist movement, and this anthology of existentialist writings provides greater insight into that influence. The work of such notable existentialists as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,
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and Albert Camus are included in the volume. In addition, introductions to each writer and their life and work are also included. Miller, Nathan, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America, Da Capo Press, 2004. This book presents a history of the decade in which modernism came of age. It includes discussion of the social, cultural, and political milieu of the day. Pound, Ezra, Selected Poems, New Directions, 1957. Often credited as the father of the modernist movement, Pound was influential in establishing the literary careers of several important modern-
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ist writers. In fact, his work is not hailed nearly as much as his role in the movement. Nevertheless, it is well worth reading, and though this volume was released in 1957, it remained in print as of 2009. This alone is a testament to Pound’s lasting contribution to American literature. Stein, Gertrude, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, Vintage, 1990. Another notable modernist writer is Gertrude Stein, one of the few women prominent in the movement. Like Pound and Eliot, Stein was an American expatriate. Her work is best known for its experiments with from and narrative.
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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ is a short lyric poem by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. It was written in 1804 and first published in his Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807. A revised version, in which the poem was expanded from three stanzas to four, was published in Wordsworth’s Poems in 1815. The origin of the poem lies in a walk that Wordsworth took with his sister Dorothy in the Lake District in northwest England, where the Wordsworths lived. This was on April 15, 1802, when the Wordsworths were walking near Gowbarrow Park, near Ullswater, and came upon a large number of daffodils near the water. Dorothy described the scene in her Grasmere Journals. William did not write the poem until two years later, making much use of Dorothy’s account. The poem has always been one of Wordsworth’s most popular. Indeed, it is one of the most famous poems in the English language. Quite simple in style, it shows how Wordsworth, like many of the Romantic poets, was inspired by the beauty of nature. It also gives insight into the way Wordsworth composed his poems.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1815
‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ is currently available in ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. . .’’ And Other Poems You Half-Remember from School edited by Ana Sampson and published Michael O’Mara Books in 2009.
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year in France, during which he became an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, inspired by its ideals of liberty and equality. He published his first poetry, Descriptive Sketches, in 1793, about the trip he had made in 1790 to the Swiss Alps. Two years later, when Wordsworth was living in Racedown, Dorset, in southwestern England, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fellow poet, with whom he was to form a remarkable friendship and creative collaboration. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Somerset so they could live near Coleridge. Wordsworth began writing Lyrical Ballads, with some contributions from Coleridge. The volume was published in 1798 and marks one of the seminal works of the Romantic period, and the beginning of what is sometimes referred to as Wordsworth’s great decade, the period during which he wrote most of the poetry for which he is remembered. In 1800, a second edition was published that included Wordsworth’s Preface, in which he explained his poetic principles.
William Wordsworth (The Library of Congress)
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, a small town in the northern part of England’s Lake District, on April 7, 1770. His family was quite well off and lived in the best house in town, which was provided for John Wordsworth, Wordsworth’s father, by Sir James Lowther, who employed Wordsworth as his legal representative. Wordsworth had three brothers and one sister. His mother died when he was eight, and his father when he was thirteen. Wordsworth spent his first nine years at Cockermouth, and the natural beauty of the region made an impression on him that would inspire his poetry and would endure for his entire life. At the age of nine Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School and remained there until 1787. Hawkshead was a village near Esthwaite Lake and Lake Windermere. The first books of Wordsworth’s long autobiographical poem The Prelude: The Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1850) describe the blissful days of his childhood and adolescence that he spent exploring nature in and around Hawkshead. Wordsworth attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1787, but had little enthusiasm for his studies. After graduating in 1791, he spent a
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Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge traveled in Germany during 1798 and 1799, and on their return Wordsworth moved back to the Lake District, living in Dove Cottage in Grasmere. In 1802, financially more secure because of a longdelayed inheritance he received from his father, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since he was a child. They were to have five children, two of whom died in infancy. In 1807, Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, which included the first version of ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ as well as ‘‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality.’’ Wordsworth quarreled with his friend Coleridge in 1810, and nearly two decades passed before they were reconciled. In 1813, Wordsworth moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, a few miles southeast of Grasmere, and was appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland (this meant that he collected revenue for the government). Wordsworth was now a famous poet, but the poetry he produced after The Excursion (1814) showed a steady decline in quality. He also abandoned the radicalism of his youth and became a political and religious conservative. In 1843 Wordsworth was appointed England’s poet laureate. Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850. The final version of The Prelude, which he had been revising on and off for years, was published posthumously in 1850.
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POEM TEXT I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
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The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
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For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Stanza 1 In ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ the speaker describes what he saw one spring day when he was walking in the English countryside. The first two lines state that he was alone as he walked, and he compares himself to a solitary cloud high in the sky. Then suddenly he comes upon a splendid sight: a multitude of daffodils. The daffodils are under the trees and next to the lake. The daffodils sway from side to side, appearing to dance in the breeze.
Stanza 2 In this stanza the poet continues to describe the daffodils. There are so many of them that he compares them to the stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way galaxy contains billions of stars and forms a band of light when seen at night from Earth. As the poet looks at them, the daffodils continue in an unbroken line at the edge of the bay. He estimates that there must be 10,000 of them, and they are all dancing in the breeze.
Stanza 3 In Stanza 3 the poet continues to describe the daffodils. He notes that the breeze is also making
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Great Poets: Wordsworth, an audio CD, includes ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ in the selection of Wordsworth’s poems read by Oliver Ford Davies and Jasper Britton. It was released by Naxos Audiobooks in 2008. William Wordsworth: Poems, an audiocassette, contains ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ in this selection of Wordsworth’s poems released by Highbridge Audio in 1998.
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POEM SUMMARY
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the water on the lake move in waves, but the daffodils seem even more joyful than the waves as they dance. In line 3, the poet says that it was impossible for a poet not to be happy when in the presence of such lively and cheerful company as the daffodils. In line 5, he tells how he stood for a long time gazing at the daffodils. But at the time, he adds, he did not fully realize how much the sight had enriched him. That realization would only come later, as the final stanza explains.
Stanza 4 In this stanza the poet reflects on his experience of suddenly coming upon all those daffodils. Some time has passed since he took that walk. Often since then, when he is alone, lying on his couch in a thoughtful mood, or with nothing much going on in his mind, he suddenly sees the daffodils once more in his mind’s eye. The memory of the daffodils, and his ability to recreate the vision of them in his mind, brings him great pleasure, and he feels that his own heart is dancing along with the daffodils.
THEMES Nature Perhaps the key term in the poem is ‘‘lonely,’’ which describes the poet’s state of mind as he walks in nature. He does not say merely that he was alone. He refers to a specific lack of a sense of
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Write a short poem that records an experience you had walking in nature. Try to remember a moment when you saw something that surprised or amazed you. In the poem, describe what you saw and how it affected you.
With another student, research daffodils. How many species are there in North America? Can they be grown throughout the United States? How long is their flowering season? What is the origin of the name? Create a slide show in PowerPoint or similar software program that pictures at least five different types of daffodils, and explain the variations.
Read the poem ‘‘To an Early Daffodil’’ by the early twentieth-century American poet Amy Lowell, and write an essay in which you com-
community, or connectedness. He is isolated, and in the poem he uses the image of a solitary cloud to convey his mood. He is walking in nature, but he feels a sense of separation from other living things, whether human or natural. But then he suddenly catches sight of the endless line of daffodils, and this changes his mood completely. What meets his eye is not merely a static scene. The wind is blowing, which makes the daffodils seem more than usually alive as they are blown about in the breeze. In this scene of great natural beauty, the poet feels happy and restored to life in a certain way. Before, he was lonely, but now he feels cheerful, moved by the beauty of the scene. It seems to him as if nature, as represented by the daffodils, is alive with joy, and he is able to share that joy. There is therefore a connection between the poet and the daffodils that puts an end to his sense of separation. It is perhaps significant that the speaker identifies himself (in line 15) as a poet, when he states that such a sight could not fail to make a poet cheerful. He does not say that just anyone would have been affected by the scene, or affected in the
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pare and contrast it with ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ How do the forms of the poems differ? What do the two poems have in common? Which poem do you prefer, and why? You can find Lowell’s poem at the Web site Famous Poets and Poems. com, http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/po ets/amy_lowell/poems/20005.
Consult Poetry for Young People: William Wordsworth, edited by Alan Liu (Sterling, 2003). Read the biography of Wordsworth and the critical introduction. Referring to this material, write an essay in which you describe how ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ embodies the themes that typify Wordsworth’s poetry as a whole.
same way. For Wordsworth, a poet was a man of deep sensibilities who was capable of understanding intuitively the connection between man and nature. To be cut off from that feeling could only be experienced by a poet as a painful lack of something vital. The sudden sight of the daffodils in motion, stirred by the wind, jolts the poet into feeling once more the same life that flows through humans and the natural world. It is a moment of true communion with the spirit of nature, and this is why it restores his spirits.
Memory and Imagination It is important to note that Wordsworth did not write the poem immediately after seeing the daffodils. Two years passed between the time he saw the daffodils and the time he wrote the poem. What prompted the poem, then, was not so much the experience of seeing the daffodils but the memory of it, recreated by the poet’s imagination at a later date. What this shows is that for Wordsworth, what he calls in the poem the ‘‘inward eye’’ is in a sense more powerful than the outward eye with which he saw the daffodils.
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Blue sky with clouds (Image copyright Adisa, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
The poet says this quite clearly in the last two lines of stanza 3, which is why the last stanza of the poem focuses not on the daffodils as an immediate sense experience but on the memory of that experience. At the time Wordsworth saw the daffodils, he enjoyed the sight, as anyone would, but he did not realize its true significance until later. In solitude at home, when he is relaxing and in a reflective mood, the sight of the daffodils suddenly comes into his mind again, and once again he experiences a moment of communion with nature; his heart dances with joy just as he remembers the daffodils dancing. The point here is that the really significant moments come not when he is in nature but when he is withdrawn from it. He can recreate the experience for himself without actually going out in nature and seeking a similar sight. The implication is that although nature may, in the poem, be a wonderful sight, the human mind is even more wonderful, since it can summon the experience again when no daffodils are in sight. Indeed, the pleasure afforded by the daffodils, thanks to the power of memory and imagination, has only increased over the intervening two years.
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STYLE Iambic Tetrameter The poem is written in what is called iambic tetrameter. An iamb is a poetic foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. (A foot, in English poetic meter, consists of two or three syllables, either one strongly stressed syllable and one lightly stressed syllable, or one strong stress and two lighter ones.) The iamb is the most common foot in English poetry. Almost all the lines in this poem are iambic. However, just for variety, the poet does vary the meter in certain places. At the beginning of stanza 1, line 6, the poet substitutes a dactylic foot for the initial iamb, in the word Fluttering. A dactylic foot consists of a strongly stressed syllable followed by two lightly stressed syllables. In stanza 2, at the beginning of line 11, the poet substitutes a spondee (two strong stresses) for the iamb. This has the effect of emphasizing the sheer number of daffodils that he saw, since the stress falling on the first syllable as well as the second makes that foot stand out against the expected iambic meter. This is
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particularly noticeable when the poem is read aloud, because what we hear (the spondee) is different from what we expect (the iamb). A similar variation occurs in the following line (the last line of stanza 2), in which instead of an iamb the poet uses a trochee, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (the opposite of an iamb).
Rhyme The poet makes use of a regular rhyme scheme throughout the poem. The first line of each stanza rhymes with the third. The second line rhymes with the fourth, and then the last two lines rhyme with each other to form a concluding couplet to each stanza. The words used in the rhymes are mostly simple, consisting of one syllable. The use of rhyme not only supplies an easily identifiable sense of order and structure to the poem but adds pleasure to the reader’s experience of it.
Personification Personification is a poetic technique in which human emotions and feelings are attributed to inanimate objects. For example, the poet states that he is ‘‘as lonely as a cloud,’’ which is a form of personification by use of a simile (a comparison of two apparently unlike things in a way that brings out the similarity between them). The poet compares his own loneliness to the loneliness of a single cloud in the sky. A more extended use of personification occurs in the descriptions of the daffodils. The poet describes them as a ‘‘crowd,’’ which is a term usually applied to people. Further, the daffodils are described as dancing, moving their heads around almost as if they were human. Dance, however, is a human invention, proceeding according to measured steps. The fact that the daffodils are presented in this light personifies them by attributing to them a human activity. The personification continues when the daffodils are described as gleeful. Glee, which means joy, is a human emotion; presumably, daffodils do not experience joy, and certainly not in the sense that humans do, but the poet is prepared to attribute such joy to them because that is how it seems to him. The personification also has the effect of creating a subtle link, through the spirit of joy, between humans and the natural world.
Alliteration Alliteration refers to the repetition of initial consonants. Wordsworth does not make much use of alliteration in this poem, but when he does it is with great effect. It occurs in the final line, the
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repetition of the d sound in dances and daffodils. The word dance is a key one in the poem, since it or a variant appears in every stanza. In the first three stanzas, it refers to the daffodils only; in the final line of the last stanza, it refers both to the daffodils and to the heart of the poet. The alliteration gives a pleasing sense of resolution to the poem, suggesting the connection between man and nature that is the theme of the poem.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The English Romantic Movement As a literary movement in England, the Romantic era is often said to have started in 1798, with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, although there were Romantic poems written earlier than that, notably William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). Wordsworth was the leading poet of the first generation of English Romantic poets, which included Coleridge (1772–1834) and Blake (1757–1827). Coleridge is most famous for ‘‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’’ which appeared in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, and ‘‘Kubla Khan’’ (written around 1797 but not published until 1816). The leading lights of the second generation of English Romantics were John Keats (1795– 1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), and George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824). There were all born about twenty years after Wordsworth but died young; Wordsworth outlived them all by nearly thirty years. To the second generation also belonged Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) of whom Wordsworth thought very highly, even composing a memorial verse to her following her death. Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800, was a seminal document in the theory of Romanticism. Reacting against the formal poetic diction and choice of subject matter in classical eighteenth-century verse, Wordsworth said he wanted to write in a new way, using simple language to reveal the most basic human emotions. He wrote about ordinary country people and everyday incidents in ways that revealed much about their feelings. Unlike the eighteenth-century poets, he thought that social outcasts, such as a retarded boy, a convict, a beggar, and others were suitable subjects for poetry. In placing the emphasis on subjective feeling and emotion, that of the poet and the subject of the poem, Wordsworth marked out a key area of the Romantic spirit.
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
Early 1800s: Wordsworth spends long hours exploring the Lake District, sometimes walking over thirty miles a day. He advocates for public footpaths in the area and believes that the Lake District is a national treasure that should be preserved. He is therefore one of the first conservationists in England. Today: Established as a national park in 1951, the Lake District is England’s largest national park, covering 885 square miles. The highest mountain is Scafell Pike at 3,210 feet, and the longest lake is Windermere (10.5 miles). An immensely popular destination for tourists, the Lake District receives 8.3 million day visitors a year. Early 1800s: From 1803 to 1815, the nations of Europe are engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. These wars pit the French Empire under Napoleon against Great Britain and its allies, which at various times include Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Spain. As the French Revolution is transformed into wars of conquest, the English Romantic poets abandon their earlier support for French revolutionary
The human heart rather than human reason became the touchstone of truth; the authenticity of personal experience was preferred over knowledge passed down by tradition. Because of this emphasis on the subjective rather than objective elements of life, the Romantics excelled at the lyric poem, in which they explored personal thoughts and feelings. This might be considered the major genre of the Romantic period. Along with this emphasis on the subjective came an exalted view of the status of the poet. Shelley famously wrote in his A Defence of Poetry that poets were the ‘‘unacknowledged legislators of the World.’’ The poet was regarded as a prophet and seer who could discern the truth of things. The Romantics were explorers in the sense that they wanted to break out of the limitations
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ideals. However, poets such as William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley remain resolutely opposed to political repression at home. Today: There is no political movement in the world that excites idealistic young poets and writers the way the French Revolution excited the Romantics or the Spanish Civil War galvanized many English writers and intellectuals in the 1930s, including George Orwell. In 2003, British writers such as the dramatist Harold Pinter and the poet laureate Andrew Motion publish poems opposing the war in Iraq.
Early 1800s: Wordsworth, a poet of nature, makes the Lake District the setting for much of his work that explores the relationship between nature and the human mind. Today: There are many English-language poets and prose writers who take as their subject spirituality explored through nature, including Annie Dillard, Jorie Graham, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Robert Hass, Gary Snyder, and Louise Glu¨ck.
imposed by the merely rational elements of life. They explored other realms of the psyche, including dreams and the supernatural (Coleridge’s ‘‘Christabel’’ is a good example of the latter) and unusual states of mind (Keats’s ‘‘Ode to a Nightingale’’ and Wordsworth’s ‘‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’’), as well as esoteric systems of thought, which fascinated both Coleridge and Blake. Many of the Romantics were involved in a restless search for the infinite. Their goal was to experience life in a more holistic way, overcoming the separation between subject and object and realizing, at the level of direct experience, the unity of all life. For the Romantics, the agent of this new mode of perception was not reason but the imagination, to which poets such as Wordsworth, Blake, and Coleridge attributed an almost god-like power.
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Golden daffodils in a field (Image copyright Chester Tugwell, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Many of the Romantics were passionately involved in the social and political issues of their day. The early Romantics were all supporters of the French Revolution, believing that it would usher in a new era of freedom and justice in which man would finally be able to achieve his full potential. Later, the poets would become disillusioned with the course the revolution took, and Wordsworth was subject to conflicted feelings when England declared war on France in 1793. In general, the Romantics supported the ideals of liberty and considered themselves to be radicals, opposed to political repression of all kinds. Byron actively supported the cause of Greek independence from Turkey and died serving it. The Romantic era is usually regarded as having ended in England in 1832. Although Wordsworth, perhaps the greatest of the English Romantics, would live another eighteen years, his most creative years were long behind him, and he had become a conservative figure. All the other great Romantics were dead. This was also the year that the Great Reform Act was passed, creating fundamental changes in British social and political life.
The Lake District The Lake District is a rural area in northwest England that is famous for its lakes and fells
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(mountains), and is forever associated with the name of Wordsworth. Wordsworth lived most of his life in the Lake District, first as a boy in Cockermouth and Hawkshead, then at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, where he wrote many of his most wellknown poems, and finally at Rydal Mount, Rydal. His poetry explores the landscape of this region in unique ways, and he knew the Lake District so well that he wrote his own guidebook to it, titled Guide to the Lakes, which was published in 1810 and went through five editions by 1835. Even at that time, the Lake District was attracting a burgeoning tourist industry, and in the later years of Wordsworth’s life many people came simply to see the places he had written about, and even to visit his home and try to catch a glimpse of the great man himself. Other poets, such as Coleridge and Robert Southey (1774–1843), were also associated with the Lake District. Although not native to the Lakes, Coleridge lived in Keswick, thirteen miles north of Grasmere, for a number of years. Southey was a friend of Wordsworth’ and was better known in his own day than in contemporary times. He settled in Keswick in 1803 and remained there until his death in 1843. He was appointed poet laureate in 1813. Contemporary writers coined the term the ‘‘Lake School’’ to describe these three poets, but the term has since been discarded.
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CRITICAL OVERVIEW Although ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ has long found favor with critics and readers, it did not meet the approval of Wordsworth’s friend Coleridge, who listed in his book Biographia Literaria five ‘‘defects’’ in Wordsworth’s poetry. The last of these was ‘‘thoughts and images too great for the subject,’’ and he chose this poem as one of two examples. Coleridge’s point was that the subject of the poem in the last stanza—daffodils remembered—was not weighty enough to supply the kind of bliss Wordsworth described. In Coleridge’s view, the ‘‘inward eye’’ is something that occupies itself with more profound thoughts than daffodils waving in the breeze. Later commentators, however, have not endorsed Coleridge’s view, preferring to draw out the deeper meanings of the poem. David Ferry, in The Limits of Mortality: An Essay on Wordsworth’s Major Poems, points out that the loneliness of the speaker at the beginning of the poem ‘‘has nothing to do with a separation from the world of men. It is a separation from the harmony of things and the aspect of eternity.’’ This separation is what is addressed in the movement of the poem, which ‘‘is a symbol of the poet’s relation to eternity (and the difficulty of perfecting that relation).’’ In William Wordsworth, Russell Noyes points out that for Wordsworth the wind metaphorically represents the ‘‘creative spirit’’; he notes that ‘‘the wind’s action draws all parts of the composition together and relates them to the whole. It is the breath which, in the climax of recollection, fills his heart with pleasure and sets it to dancing with the daffodils.’’ For Geoffrey Durrant, in William Wordsworth, the poem ‘‘is only superficially about the daffodils. ’’ Instead, it is ‘‘an account of the experience of poetic creation.’’ Durrant concludes his analysis by pointing out the following: Wordsworth in this poem is describing an experience of which all are capable, but which is increasingly neglected as men become preoccupied with business and professions. It is the imagination that enables man to enter into and give life and significance to the world.
CRITICISM Bryan Aubrey Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. In this essay he discusses how Wordsworth came to write ‘‘I
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THOSE WHO KNOW WORDSWORTH’S POETRY WILL RECOGNIZE THE DESCRIPTION OF THIS QUIET, TRANQUIL STATE BECAUSE WORDSWORTH MENTIONS IT IN MANY OTHER POEMS, HOLDING IT UP AS AN IDEAL CONDITION OF THE MIND IN WHICH THE TRUTH OF THINGS SPONTANEOUSLY REVEALS ITSELF.’’
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ and what the poem reveals about Wordsworth’s theory of poetry. ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ may well be the most anthologized poem in the English language, and generations of school students have been presented with it as an accessible work by one of England’s greatest poets. ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ may indeed be a simple poem but it is not quite as simple as it might first appear, and it leads the interested reader into a glimpse of the philosophical aspects of Wordsworth’s poetry and of his theories about how poetry comes to be written. The origins of the poem lie in a walk near Ullswater taken by Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in April 1802. The details of this walk are known because Dorothy kept a journal and recorded the day-to-day activities of herself and her brother. This particular spring day was mild but very windy, so windy in fact that at one point they thought they would have to turn back. But they continued and when they were in the woods they saw a few daffodils close by the lake. Then more and more daffodils appeared, a ‘‘long belt’’ of them stretching along the shore of the lake. Dorothy, whose journals were first published in 1897, long after her death (later published as The Grasmere Journals in The Norton Anthology of English Literature [1979]), described the sight: I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
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Wordsworth originally intended his poem ‘‘Nutting,’’ to be part of The Prelude but decided instead to include it in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800. It is a fairly short poem that gives the flavor of The Prelude, telling as it does of one of Wordsworth’s quiet adventures as a boy in the Lake District. The poem can be found in William Wordsworth: The Poems, volume 1 (1977), edited by John O. Hayden. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009) by Camille T. Dungy contains 180 poems by 93 poets. The poets represented include Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, Melvin B. Tolson, Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. The poems are drawn from all significant periods in the history of African Americans, including slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the contemporary period. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lyric poem ‘‘The Eolian Harp’’ was written in 1795, a few years before Wordsworth began to write his greatest poems. Although it was composed not in the Lake District, but in the southern county of Somerset, it has many of the elements that would later be found in Wordsworth’s verse: appreciative description of a quiet scene in nature, followed by some reflections by a tranquil mind about the nature of life and of the interaction between man and nature. Like many of Coleridge’s ‘‘conversation poems,’’ it has a circular structure, ending where it began but with a deepened understanding of life as a result of the central meditative portion. The poem can be found in
Coleridge’s Selected Poetry, edited by William Empson and David Pirie (2002).
‘‘To Daffodils,’’ a short and rather mournful poem by the seventeenth-century English poet Robert Herrick, shows that for some, the sight of a daffodil can arouse emotions other than joy. The poem is included in Selected Poems of Robert Herrick (2003), edited by David Jesson-Dibley.
For those who are unable to visit the Lake District in person, the next best thing might be The English Lakes (1989) by Robin Whiteman and Rob Talbot, which contains over one hundred photographs of the area, along with an informative introduction and explanatory texts.
The Invisible Ladder: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poems for Young Readers (1996), edited by Liz Rosenberg, contains a selection of poems that were written for adults but are also accessible to young readers. The poets represented include Rita Dove, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Nikki Giovanni, and Stanley Kunitz, all of whom write short introductions to their own poems and include black and white photographs of themselves as children and as adults.
Mary Oliver is one of America’s finest contemporary poets; her work is notable for its observation of and reverence for the natural world. Unlike Wordsworth and some other Romantic poets, who often use nature to make grand statements about infinity, eternity, and the human self, Oliver is more content simply to record and enjoy the physicality of nature itself and its recurring cycles. Her New and Selected Poems: Volume One (2005) contains a representative selection from her forty-year career as a poet.
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over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway.
With this description in mind it is easy to see how the poem came about. Dorothy wrote her journals not for publication but for the enjoyment of her brother, and obviously Wordsworth read this passage and was inspired to write the poem, perhaps within a few hours of reading it. Two years had elapsed between the walk and the writing of the first version of the poem, and the similarity in choice of words makes Dorothy’s influence clear. She writes that the daffodils ‘‘tossed’’ and ‘‘danced’’; it seemed as if they ‘‘laughed’’ and were ‘‘gay,’’ and all these elements make their way into the poem. The inspiration for the poem, then, came not only from nature but also from a literary source. It is also noticeable that in the interests of his poetic art, Wordsworth altered some of the details of the walk. In fact, he was not alone but with his sister; however, the creation in the poem of a solitary walker who feels lonely and is then cheered by the sight of the daffodils creates a more dramatic contrast than would have been possible with two walkers. Also, Dorothy reports a very strong wind, but this becomes a more gentle breeze in the poem, creating a softer scene than the one actually witnessed. Wordsworth’s creative reworking of the material, both the original experience and Dorothy’s account of it, illustrates the point that poetry is never the mere recording of facts but the poet’s imaginative recreation of the scene and its significance. What is truly fascinating about this poem, which on the surface appears to be a nature poem in praise of daffodils, is that Wordsworth’s appreciation of the sight occurs at two removes from the original experience. First, he is dependent on the literary source in Dorothy’s journal. Second, what most inspires Wordsworth is not the initial sight of the daffodils. As he states at the end of the third stanza, he did not realize the full significance of what he saw at the time. He did not think much about it. But the experience of seeing the daffodils worked on him (so to speak) over the intervening two years, prompted by Dorothy’s description and reaching a new significance not on Wordsworth’s seeing the daffodils again but on remembering them, on recreating the sight of them in the quiet of his own mind when he was not out in nature at all but comfortable and alone
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within the four walls of his home. The poem, then, is not so much about a sense experience in nature but rather a mental experience, something that occurred within the consciousness of the poet, presumably with his eyes closed or halfclosed to release the ‘‘inward eye.’’ This became a source of pleasure even greater than that provided by the original sense experience. It is the mental experience that is also the source of poetic creativity; the writing of the poem came out of one of these moments, as Wordsworth himself makes clear in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, even though that preface was written in 1800, four years earlier than the poem. Wordsworth’s Preface explains his poetic practice and gives insight into how he wrote his poems. He writes that ‘‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’’ The emphasis here is on feeling, the subjective realm of the poet’s emotions rather than objects or events in the physical world. Wordsworth continues, ‘‘it [poetry] takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.’’ This is exactly what happened with those daffodils. In a tranquil state at home, lying on his couch, relaxed, his mind open, he recalled the emotions associated with seeing the daffodils, and this recreates that feeling in his mind, which is now, as he writes in the Preface, ‘‘in a state of enjoyment.’’ Although the sight of the daffodils was a pleasurable experience, Wordsworth writes that even painful experiences, when recalled in a state of tranquility, can become pleasurable. The poem that results from this process is intended to produce in the reader ‘‘an overbalance of pleasure.’’ Wordsworth’s poetic technique, then, is intended to produce pleasure; this is the purpose of poetry in his view. Those who know Wordsworth’s poetry will recognize the description of this quiet, tranquil state because Wordsworth mentions it in many other poems, holding it up as an ideal condition of the mind in which the truth of things spontaneously reveals itself. It can be found, for example in ‘‘Lines, Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,’’ one of the most celebrated of all Wordsworth’s poems, in which he describes in detail a physiological condition in which the body is extremely quiet and calm but the mind is highly alert, able to see into the depth and heart of things. It is this state of mind that can intuitively feel the essential unity between man and nature that was so much a part of Wordsworth’s experience, especially in his youth and early manhood,
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and on which he based his philosophical beliefs. Many such moments are described in the early books of The Prelude, about Wordsworth’s boyhood and youth in the Lake District when he felt such deep communion with nature. A description that closely resembles the one found in the last stanza of ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ occurs in ‘‘Expostulation and Reply’’ (stanza 6); another example can be found in the final stanza of ‘‘The Tables Turned.’’ Both these poems are from Lyrical Ballads. Another key concept in Wordsworth’s poetry that is relevant for ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ is what he referred to in The Prelude as ‘‘spots of time.’’ These are particularly vivid moments in the poet’s experience, often from early in his life, which he recalls later and which have a power to inspire, to reveal a truth, to restore the mind to a sense of its own vastness and the heart to its deepest feelings. In this sense, Wordsworth is a poet not so much of the present moment but of the past. He is a poet of memory, of the recollected experience rather than the immediate one. It is this sense that those moments during which he gazed at the daffodils became one of the ‘‘spots of time,’’ subject to later recall and possessed of a kind of beauty and power that could nourish the poet’s inner life long after the daffodils themselves had faded away. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Rodney Stenning Edgecombe In the following review, Edgecombe describes the emotional thought in the lines of ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ Rather as Tchaikovsky incorporated a prelude written by one of his pupils into his opera Opritchnik, so Wordsworth, with due marital pride, implanted the following two lines by his wife in ‘‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’’: ‘‘They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude’’ (21–22). Either with a mildly malicious purpose, or in ignorance of their source, Coleridge singled them out in Biographia Literaria as ‘‘mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal’’ (224). If, he goes on to argue, the memory of daffodils occupies ‘‘that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude,’’ ‘‘in what words shall we describe the joy of retrospection, when the images and virtuous actions of a whole well-spent life, pass before the
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conscience which is indeed the inward eye: which is indeed ‘the bliss of solitude’’’ (224)? This curiously Augustan response inverts and at the same time endorses the belief in decorum that led Johnson to fuss over Lady Macbeth and her knife, and it becomes more than a touch ironical if we set the lines against a passage from Rasselas that might well have inspired them: I am less unhappy than the rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from my memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my past life. Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration, that my acquirements are now useless, and that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed. The rest, whose minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either corroded by malignant passions, or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual vacancy. (534)
Mary Wordsworth seems to have remembered Imlac’s juxtaposition of amusement and solitude in formulating the ‘‘bliss of solitude.’’ Her husband, in the course of embedding them into a poem about the renovating power of the imagination, seems himself to have recalled the melancholy of Imlac’s sic transit reveries (‘‘sorrowful consideration’’ and ‘‘pensive mood’’ are cognate states) and also supplanted Johnson’s ‘‘of perpetual vacancy’’ with Romantic pre-creative indolence (‘‘In vacant or in pensive mood’’). Furthermore, in virtual refutation of Lockean images that ‘‘fade’’ from the mental tabula, he deploys the forceful verb ‘‘flash,’’ one that combines both motion and intense color. Coming to the poem from the same point of departure (for it seems probable that he too has Imlac’s discourse subliminally in mind), Coleridge claims to find these un-Johnsonian adaptations of a Johnsonian sentiment indecorous, for why else would he blame Wordsworth for replacing the conscience—‘‘by recollection of the accidents of my past life’’—with a sensuous eidolon? Source: Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, ‘‘Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 60, No. 3, Spring 2002, pp. 134–36.
Matthew C. Brennan In the following review, Brennan reviews the explication by some scholars of ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ Shortly after Poems in Two Volumes (1807) appeared, Wordsworth worried about readers misinterpreting ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ (Letters 174, 194–95). Still concerned in 1815, he
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attached a note to the poem in his first Collected Works. ‘‘The subject of these stanzas,’’ he asserted, ‘‘is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression [ . . . ] upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it’’ (qtd. in Stillinger 539). Some critics have basically followed Wordsworth’s lead: To Jack Stillinger the mental experience embodied by the poem is simple and ordinary (544), and to John Milstead the first three stanzas exemplify merely ‘‘a physical stimulus-and-response mechanism’’ through which the poet remains ‘‘passive’’ (89). Nevertheless, in the preface to the 1815 collection Wordsworth not only argues that the imagination is ruled by ‘‘sublime consciousness’’ (Stillinger 486), but he also places ‘‘I Wandered’’ among poems categorized by ‘‘Imagination.’’ Indeed, many critics ignore Wordsworth’s comments on the poem and instead read it as representing a moment in nature of spiritual insight that recurs during a later imaginative re-creation (Joplin 68– 69, Stallknecht 81–82, Hartman 5). More precisely, though, ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ dramatizes an experience of the sublime in its first three stanzas, which the poet recollects and reexperiences as a ‘‘spot of time’’ in the last stanza. Like other sublime passages in The Prelude and ‘‘Tintern Abbey,’’ this one draws on Edmund Burke’s as well as Wordsworth’s ideas of the sublime. Burke’s thoughts in his Philosophical Enquiry are especially recalled in the lines that Wordsworth added for the 1815 republication: Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretch in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance. (7–12) For one thing, by stretching in a ‘‘never-ending line’’ the daffodils embody the sublime idea of vastness, in particular ‘‘vastness of extent’’ or length. Compared to the sublimity of the ‘‘Simplon Pass’’ or ‘‘Mt. Snowdon,’’ these flowers surely seem simple and ordinary, but that is partly because, as Burke explains, vastness of height and depth are more striking and grand than vastness of extent (72). Another conventional cause of the sublime this stanza exhibits is infinity. The host of flowers appears infinite, hence Wordsworth’s impression of their uncountable profusion, ‘‘Ten thousand saw I at a glance.’’ As Burke remarks, when ‘‘the eye’’ cannot ‘‘perceive the bounds of’’ things or when
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they are ‘‘continued to any indefinite number’’—as with the daffodils—‘‘they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so’’ (73). Moreover, because Wordsworth stresses that the daffodils are ‘‘[c]ontinuous’’ they also constitute what Burke terms ‘‘the artificial infinite.’’ This condition applies, Burke explains, through ‘‘succession,’’ in which ‘‘parts may be continued so long, and in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their progress beyond their actual limits’’ (74). In other words, the flowers are so numerous and extend so far from the poet’s vantage that when he suddenly glimpses them, his ‘‘sublime consciousness’’ imagines them as infinite. Significantly, this numerousness of the daffodils leads Wordsworth to compare them to ‘‘stars,’’ which because of their profuse number evoke for Burke yet another cause of sublimity: magnificence. Associating the shining profusion of stars with the flowers clearly lends them a similar magnificence and thus evokes a response from the poet akin to his traveler’s in ‘‘A Night Piece’’ where ‘‘multitudes of stars’’ and an instantaneous gleam of the moon trigger a sublime vision. Besides illustrating many of Burke’s ideas of the sublime, ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’’ also encompasses Wordsworth’s chief elements of the sublime as he defines it in his own unpublished essay ‘‘The Sublime and the Beautiful’’ written in 1811–12. Here Wordsworth divides the sublime into two types: one that is negative and thus similar to Burke’s, which hinges on terror; and one that is positive and produces what Wordsworth calls in ‘‘Tintern Abbey’’ ‘‘the blessed mood.’’ Both types, Wordsworth emphasizes, create a sense of ‘‘intense unity, without a conscious contemplation of parts’’ (‘‘The Sublime’’ 354). Clearly, ‘‘I Wandered’’ depicts the positive sublime, which reveals unity by rousing ‘‘us to a sympathetic energy’’ through which the mind participates with the ‘‘force which is acting upon it’’ (354). Through his sublime consciousness the poet perceives the unity of not only the dancing flowers themselves but also the entire scene, which includes both ‘‘the waves’’ dancing ‘‘beside them’’ and himself as he ‘‘gazed—and gazed.’’ In this moment of sublime vision, his imagination sympathetically unites him and the scene ‘‘in such a jocund company.’’ During the moment itself he does not think; he is ‘‘without a conscious contemplation’’ of the elements unified by his sublime perception. But afterward when he recollects it and re-experiences it as a ‘‘flash upon that inward eye’’—the agent of
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sublime consciousness—he recognizes that, like the waves, he too ‘‘dances with the daffodils’’ while part of the interpenetrating ‘‘jocund company.’’ This repetition of dance rhetorically enacts the unification of flowers, waves, and poet. The poem opens with the poet lonely, disconnected from his environment, and ends with him connected to it, enjoying ‘‘the bliss of solitude’’ through the unifying flash of sublime consciousness. Though Milstead interprets the poet’s gazing at the daffodils as unimaginatively passive and David Joplin construes it as intensely active because trance-like, the quality of Wordsworth’s vision in fact falls somewhere between the purely sensory and the transcendentally spiritual. As we saw, Wordsworth’s own note to the poem qualifies the experience as imaginative but one in which he does not exert his imagination. In other words, the poem appears to illustrate what he calls in ‘‘Expostulation and Reply . . . a wise passiveness.’’ In this passive state he remains receptive to nature’s powers, which both ‘‘Tintern Abbey’’ and ‘‘The Sublime’’ testify can produce the sublime; and through ‘‘wise passiveness’’ Wordsworth insists we can feed the mind, even without fully exerting the imagination. Thus, his gazing at the daffodils’ dance brings him ‘‘wealth’’ and feeds his ‘‘inward eye’’ despite his unconscious passivity. Stallknecht’s explanation of the various levels of Wordsworth’s intuition of ‘‘the unity of Being’’ overlooks the sublime but helps show how the experience of the daffodils evokes sublime consciousness: Although Wordsworth’s mystical or intuitive consciousness of ‘‘the unity of Being’’ often followed ‘‘robust’’ imaginative activity, this consciousness ‘‘was also sometimes induced by ‘wise passiveness’’’ (9, 12). Because, as Stallknecht writes, this passive state resembles the more active imaginative ones in allowing the ‘‘depths of consciousness to manifest themselves’’ (12), I think we can equate ‘‘wise passiveness’’ with experiences ruled by the sublime consciousness of ‘‘intense unity.’’ Wordsworth unfolds just such a sublime experience in the poet’s wisely passive vision of the daffodils in ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ Source: Matthew C. Brennan, ‘‘Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 57, No. 3, Spring 1999, pp. 140–44.
David Joplin In the following essay, Joplin explains the use of ‘‘host’’ in the poem, ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’
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Although a ‘‘nature’’ writer like Thoreau is widely recognized for his wordplay, his English counterpart Wordsworth is much less so. As often as not, his style tends more toward an Arnoldian ‘‘high seriousness’’ than toward a playful tour de force of language such as Thoreau offers. Nevertheless, Wordsworth is certainly not without his paronomastic moments. One such moment, heretofore unrecognized, may be the pun on ‘‘host’’ in ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’’ Careful attention to host shows how Wordsworth, in a manner anticipating Hopkins, has brought together a number of meanings that help us understand how deeply the daffodils affect the poet’s mind. ‘‘Host’’ appears in the familiar first stanza, which I quote in full: I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. The comma after ‘‘host’’ serves as emphasis, making us reconsider how Wordsworth intends its meaning. The most apparent needs only brief mention: The ‘‘host’’ is a ‘‘crowd’’ of flowers. The OED (Compact Desk Edition) lists host in this sense as ‘‘a great company; a multitude; a large number.’’ To understand how Wordsworth carries ‘‘host’’ beyond a mere ‘‘crowd’’ through wordplay, one must first note how the crowd affects the poet. In the penultimate stanza Wordsworth describes himself ‘‘gaz[ing]’’ at the daffodils: ‘‘I gazed—and gazed—but little thought / What wealth the show to me had brought’’ (17–18). The repetition of ‘‘gazed’’ indicates an intense activity, almost as if the poet were in a trance. Such an event bespeaks a shift in consciousness, what Owen Barfield would call a ‘‘felt change of consciousness’’ (p. 48). The final stanza emphasizes much the same experience, only this time it occurs through memory—the poet lies on his couch and recalls the ‘‘host,’’ which then triggers the mind’s reaction. The daffodils, therefore, affect the poet directly and indirectly through his eyes and his mind. Now to circle back to the wordplay. Because the ‘‘host’’ initiates the effect, it is, as the OED suggests, the agent that ‘‘entertains.’’ Or as the American Heritage Dictionary puts it, a ‘‘host’’ is the ‘‘one who entertains guests, a master of ceremonies.’’ Wordsworth’s reference to his experience as a ‘‘show’’ incorporates this second meaning. The pun, therefore, allows us to see the ‘‘host’’—the
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daffodils—as a ‘‘master of ceremonies’’ or guide who treats the guest—Wordsworth—to a ‘‘show,’’ which is both the ‘‘dancing’’ flowers and their effect on the poet. The punning grows more complex as we delve deeper into the nature of the show. On one level, the flowers simply bring psychological ease: The lonely poet sees the ‘‘jocund company’’ and becomes happy. But on another level, the event moves through a transposition into a spiritual experience. For one thing, the intent gazing signals a meditative moment akin to spiritual activity: As he drinks in nature’s beauty, the poet attains an elevated state of mind. And the last stanza repeats the experience through memory. But in the latter case, the effect is produced only when the flowers ‘‘flash upon that inward eye.’’ Although the ‘‘inward eye’’ is generally taken to be the imagination, it also has a metaphysical application. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy traces the image of the eye to a tradition that links it with the eye of God (50). This line of thought allows the ‘‘inward eye’’ to be seen as the spiritual center of the mind. From such a perspective, as images of the daffodils open his ‘‘inward eye,’’ Wordsworth experiences a transcendental moment similar, at least in kind, to the one in ‘‘Tintern Abbey,’’ when the temporal gives way to the eternal so that he sees ‘‘into the life of things’’ (48). The initiating ‘‘host,’’ therefore, comes through wordplay to occupy the role of initiating priest. This carries the pun even further into religious contexts. One is the ‘‘Biblical and derived’’ usage that describes a ‘‘multitude of angels’’ (OED). The golden daffodils fit this image insofar as their beauty invokes a correspondent spiritual beauty, as a heavenly host of angels would. Thus, the angelic ‘‘host’’ of flowers enables the poet to participate in a kind of spiritual beauty associated with nature. From here it is not a long step to the narrow liturgical sense of host as the ‘‘bread in the Eucharist’’ (OED). In that connection, the ‘‘host’’ functions as a symbol that transports Wordsworth, so to speak, to a higher level. The pun thus expands to include its full biblical and liturgical connotations. Yet a final pun occurs through a shift in grammatical function. Host functions first as a noun, but it can also be a verb: ‘‘to play the host’’ (OED). Juxtaposing the nominal and verbal uses, one can see that it is the ‘‘host’’ that ‘‘hosts’’ the event. Thus, the noun host doubles, at least semantically, with the verb’s meaning. Such linguistic
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doubling corresponds to the ‘‘layered’’ effect nature has on the poet. When Thoreau, the consummate linguist, puns on host, his wordplay seems but yet another instance of his conscious manipulation of language. But I wonder if, in the case of Wordsworth, the pun is more of an unconscious event, one of those in which, as Erich Neumann might suggest, the poet unconsciously engages the archetype. In any event host does carry several semantic possibilities, each of which resonates with and amplifies the others, much as carrion does in Hopkins’s wonderfully wrought ‘‘Carrion Comfort.’’ These layers of ‘‘hosting’’ help us understand how deeply— and doubly—daffodils affect the poet’s mind. Source: David Joplin, ‘‘Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 56, No. 2, Winter 1998, pp. 67–71.
Bernard Richards In the following essay, Richards writes about the phonetic significance of the words in the poem. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:— A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company; I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: In his essay ‘‘A Touching Compulsion, Wordsworth and the Problem of Literary Representation,’’ published in The Georgia Review (vol. 31, summer 1977), Geoffrey H. Hartman offers the following interpretation of lines 17–18: When Wordsworth writes: ‘‘I gazed—and gazed—but little thought / What wealth the show to me had brought,’’ our ear may be justified in adding ‘‘I grazed—and grazed.’’ Touch, or materiality, returns to the phantom of sight. The ear develops the image in its own way. (352)
He obviously has not had second thoughts about this reading, inasmuch as the essay has been reprinted in The Unremarkable Wordsworth (London: Methuen, 1987). Consider the following groups of words: pied, pride, plyed; pate, prate, plate; paid, prayed, played; fame, frame, flame; bead, breed, bleed; baize, brase, blaze; pays, praise, plays; fees, freeze, fleas; cock, crock, clock; band, brand, bland; bent, brent, blent; goes, grows, gloze. In each case they would be perfect homophones, were it not for the difference of a letter, the letter being either r or l. With the difference being so tiny, should one not regard all these words as similar and
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interchangeable? After all, what’s in a letter? The answer is, of course, a colossal amount, and slight as it may seem, there is an enormous difference between goes and grows. The whole evolution of a communal and functional language has depended on precisely these apparently infinitesimal differences, and it is the duty of language users and commentators on language to preserve them if language is to continue to have any kind of utility. To this list one could add gazed, grazed, glazed. There are considerable differences among gazed, grazed, and glazed. They are separate, and they should be kept separate. ‘‘The ear develops the image’’ says Hartman, but only an ear stuffed with physical and figurative wax could do such a thing. The figurative wax is a cast of mind that approaches a text with a predetermined thesis, insisting on associating the thesis with the text, irrespective of whether or not the text invites or sustains it. Hartman has made a critical move that is completely unwarranted; indeed, to call it ‘‘interpretation’’ is to misuse the term. It is more like creative vandalism. The essay is dominated by some concept of touch in Wordsworth, a sense that is undoubtedly present in many poems, but not in this one at this point, and the ear has no justification in performing the addition. If the ear did in fact confuse the words, then some other mental faculty should come into play to censor it out, and such a discriminatory function should have operated long before the so-called interpretation reached the printed page. Hartman should have had the sense and the humility in 1977 not to offer such an illicit extension of the lines; ten years later he should have had them in extra measure. It is a kindness to call it ‘‘criticism’’ or ‘‘explication’’; but whatever it is, it should be strenuously resisted. Source: Bernard Richards, ‘‘Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’’ in Explicator, Vol. 48, No. 1, Fall 1989, pp. 14–16.
SOURCES Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, edited by George Watson, Dent, 1984, pp. 258–59. Durrant, Geoffrey, William Wordsworth, Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 20, 25. Ezard, John, ‘‘Poet Laureate Joins Doubters Over Iraq,’’ in Guardian (London, England), January 9, 2003, http:// www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/09/iraq.writersoniraq (accessed July 1, 2009).
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‘‘Facts and Figures,’’ in Lake District National Park, http:// www.lake-district.gov.uk/index/learning/facts_and_figures. htm (accessed July 2, 2009). Ferry, David, The Limits of Mortality: An Essay on Wordsworth’s Major Poems, Wesleyan University Press, 1959, p. 10. McCracken, David, Wordsworth and the Lake District: A Guide to the Poems and Their Places, Oxford University Press, 1984. Noyes, Russell, William Wordsworth, Twayne’s English Author Series, No. 118, Twayne Publishers, 1971, p. 136. Pinter, Harold, ‘‘God Bless America,’’ http://www.har oldpinter.org/politics/god_bless_america.shtml (accessed July 1, 2009). Shelley, Percy Bysshe, A Defence of Poetry, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, selected and edited by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, W. W. Norton, 1977, p. 508. Wordsworth, Dorothy, The Grasmere Journals, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th ed., edited by M. H. Abrams, W. W. Norton, 1979, p. 322. Wordsworth, William, ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’’ in William Wordsworth: The Poems, Vol. 1, edited by John O. Hayden, Penguin, 1977, pp. 619–20. ———, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in William Wordsworth: The Poems, Vol. 1, edited by John O. Hayden, Penguin, 1977, pp. 886–87.
FURTHER READING Abrams, M. H., Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, W. W. Norton, 1971. This classic work is one of the best studies of Romanticism ever written. Abrams discusses English and German literature and philosophy, bringing out the parallels between different writers in terms of subject matter, themes, imagery, structure, and other literary elements. Gill, Stephen Charles, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989. This well-researched biography is particularly strong on connecting Wordsworth’s life with his work. Gill also makes use of some Wordsworth family papers that were not discovered until 1977. He argues that there was more continuity in Wordsworth’s political and social views than has usually been thought, and that Wordsworth’s achievement in his later years, long after his greatest poetry was written, deserves to be respected. Pottle, Frederick A., ‘‘The Eye and the Object in the Poetry of Wordsworth,’’ in Wordsworth: Centenary Studies Presented at Cornell and Princeton Universities, edited by Gilbert T. Dunklin, Princeton University Press, 1951. This is a classic essay and one of the most detailed studies of ‘‘I Wandered Lonely as a
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Cloud.’’ Pottle examines the poem in the light of Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, concluding that Wordsworth’s subject is not so much the physical object but a mental image; he is therefore not a descriptive poet but an imaginative one.
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Roe, Nicholas, ed., Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, Oxford University Press, 2005. This collection of forty-six essays is one of the most thorough and up-to-date introductions to all aspects of the literary and historical contexts of Romanticism.
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Jazz Fantasia CARL SANDBURG 1920
‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ was written by Carl August Sandburg in 1919 and published in 1920, at a time when jazz, the first truly American form of music, was being born. This was also the dawn of the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition. Jazz and blues were played in honky-tonks and speakeasies (types of legal and illegal nightclubs), where bootlegged alcohol flowed freely. Jazz involves loud, lively musical instruments, rhythm, and fun. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is about the celebratory sounds of jazz instruments, along with soulful sounds of the blues, embodied in a Mississippi steamboat. A fantasia is a literary or musical work that evokes the imagination through fanciful, supernatural, or unnatural devices. It is speculated that Sandburg got the idea for this poem while watching a minstrel show. According to Bill Kirchner in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Sandburg said in All the Young Strangers that whenever minstrel shows came to town, he always had ‘‘two bits for a ticket to the top gallery.’’ Minstrel shows found large audiences and positive reviews. ‘‘Most important,’’ Kirchner writes, ‘‘they stimulated an attitude indissolubly linked with jazz. They seemed to urge wild, spontaneously, sympathetic movement among singers, players, and audiences alike.’’ It was jazz rising, before it was known as jazz. The poem first appeared in a collection titled Smoke and Steel; the collection is about Chicago, the city where jazz got its name, although this
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overlooked in favor of other poems, such as ‘‘Fog,’’ probably Sandburg’s most famous work. Today,‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is lauded for its genius. It is at once a poem, a musical composition, and an ethereal image of moon, river, and phantom musicians.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Carl Sandburg (The Library of Congress)
form of music actually began in New Orleans. Sandburg traveled around the Midwestern states at the age of eighteen as a hobo, hopping into railroad boxcars, riding the small platforms between cars and stowing away on steamboats. He is known today as the ‘‘People’s Poet,’’ writing about the daily life and hardships of the poor in their own language. Music plays an integral part in his poetry, and he is remembered as a balladeer who sang his poems and prose, accompanying himself on a banjo. Though the poem was relatively obscure during Sandburg’s lifetime, ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ has gained a great deal more attention as the popularity of jazz has grown and flourished. Artists may perform it now as a stand-alone rhythmic poetry reading or with jazz accompaniment. It can be found in the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (1969), published by Harcourt Brace. When ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ was first published, it was not considered representative of the poetry of the times because of its free verse style, unexalted themes, and the inclusion of coarse slang. These were not valued traits, and this poem was
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Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, to Swedish immigrants August and Clara Sandburg in Galesburg, Illinois. His father was a blacksmith’s assistant for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. Times were hard for the family, and as the second of seven children, Sandburg learned the importance of work. One of his first memories was digging in the family garden for vegetables. He went to school through the eighth grade but had to drop out to help support the family. Working dozens of odd jobs (such as bottle-washer, tinsmith’s helper, barber shop porter, and painter’s apprentice) gave him a lifelong connection to common people and a passion for portraying their plight. Determined to be a poet or a hobo, he left home at age eighteen and experienced the hardscrabble life of a vagrant, working only to pay his passage or for a small portion of food. He learned to love the Midwest and its people, picking up folk stories, jokes, and slang and listening to the music and sound of the cities like Chicago. He made a banjo out of a box and taught himself to play it. When the Spanish-American war broke out, Sandburg enlisted and was sent to Puerto Rico. After six months, he returned and enrolled in Lombard (now Knox) College in Galesburg, where he first began dabbling in poetry. An admiring professor encouraged him and even published some of Sandburg’s poems at his own expense. Sandburg never graduated but spent his next years writing and editing for newspapers and magazines, always composing poetry on the side. He met Lilian Steichan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was the editor for the Social-Democratic Herald. She sympathized with his ideas for social and labor reform, and they were married in 1908. His Chicago Poems was published in 1916. In 1917, he began writing for the Chicago Daily News. That year, Harcourt, Brace, and Howe published his collection of articles, The Chicago Race Riots, which presented a sympathetic viewpoint toward the prejudices endured by blacks in the city.
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Meanwhile, his poems were becoming more widely known, as the collections Cornhuskers (1918), Smoke and Steel (1920, which included ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’), and Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) were published, making him a recognized poet of American western life. His poetry began to take on the mantle of the commonest of people, and not everyone knew how to interpret his slang and his murky images of reality. His Rootabaga Stories (1922) showed his love for telling stories to his daughters, and his American Songbag (1927) demonstrated his passion for American folk songs and ballads. Sandburg had a fascination with the life of fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln. Besides his poetry, he is probably best remembered for his biographies of that president. Sandburg told of Lincoln’s disdain for the sale of slave girls in New Orleans; this incident may have informed Sandburg’s reports of the prejudices against blacks in Chicago. He received the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1940 for the four-volume Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems in 1951. He continued to write prolifically; he was named the poet laureate of Illinois in 1962 and received the International Poets Award of Honorary Poet Laureate of the United States in 1963. He died in Flat Rock, North Carolina, on July 22, 1967, at the age of 89.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
A free MP3 download of a Librivox recording featuring more than fifteen artists’ readings of ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is available online through Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) as a public domain text (2006). Track six on the CD Back to Japan and China is titled ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ and is performed by the Luther College Concert Band. It is available as an audio CD conducted by Frederick Nyline and produced by Luther College Recordings in 2005. Samba Jazz Fantasia by Duduka Da Fonseca is an audio CD of a seven-piece jazz/ samba ensemble with vocals. It was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Latin Jazz Album. River Sound Studios recorded it in New York in March 2006. Fantasia 2000 is an animated film sequel to the 1940s Walt Disney Pictures Fantasia. It was released in December 1999 and features the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Orchestra. The classical music combined with Disney animation provides a good illustration of the musical form of fantasia.
POEM SUMMARY Line 1 ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ begins with the drums, the instrument most critical to any jazz musical performance. The drums lead the music by their steady rhythmic beat. They set the tone and mood: the cadence of a dance or shuffle. The rhythm of the first part of the fantasia starts out a steady andante (moderate) jazz tempo. Line 1, if spoken in a standard 4/4 time signature (four beats in a row), should have a strict rhythm. In jazz, the first beat is always given more emphasis than the rest; it is stronger than the rest and serves as the downbeat. This convention is helpful in establishing the rhythm of the piece, and it also gives direction as how to dance or march. The repetition of d’s makes the tongue a percussion instrument on the roof of the mouth, just as the b’s make a drum of the lips.
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Lines 2–3 The saxophones now join the ensemble with a wail. Jazz saxophones usually have a sad, beautifully mournful sound. The description of them is like the ripples of high tenor sax notes rushing over, wrapping smoothly over the notes in a gentle massage. However, this passage almost demands the addition of an alto or even lower pitched saxophone, twisting and sustaining. These saxophones are longer and lower to the floor and have a curved shape. Sandburg seems to break up the rhythm with this phrase with a ritardando (slowing) in an improvisational style. He places a bird’s eye (musical symbol meaning to hold) at the end of the line, telling the instruments to take a little break. Then, as if he is the
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master of ceremonies at a jazz concert, Sandburg exhorts his musicians to play. If he were introducing the origins of rock and roll, he would say ‘‘Go, Johnny, go!’’ He introduces this new music genre to the literary world. As the curtain opens, the anticipation rises.
Lines 4–6 The percussion section emerges, and the tempo and mood become lively. A poor street musician would use anything available as an instrument. A tin pan made an excellent tambourine, but without the shakers, it would give more of a light knocking as knuckles rolled and thumped across it. It was an embellishment to the drums, which kept the steady beat, and it gave sixteenth-note jazz rhythms in quick syncopation, emphasizing fast beats not accented in the straight 4/4 time (repetition of four beats in a row). The accent is spoken on the letter p, which gives a percussive pop of the lips when read aloud. The trombones come in next and seep their way into the piece. A lower-pitched brass instrument, the trombone has a slide that allows the artist to move directly from note to note or slide smoothly in continuous resonance to the next pitch. The sliding gives the impression of an oozing of sound rather than the strict adherence to intonation that a piano might have. This sliding was very popular when performing while marching. Sandpaper was applied to blocks of wood that were brushed against each other to obtain the repetitive sh sound that Sandburg describes. These blocks are also a percussion instrument, and they provide the shuffle sound, like the brushes on a cymbal. When the poem is read aloud, the lungs and throat produce a soft pop of air on the accent beat, and air rushing through the teeth on the sh at the end of the word creates a swishing sound. In this case, the first hu sound gets an accent, the second one gets a small accent, and the third gets the strongest. The rhythm would span six beats, with sh sound getting one beat, a getting one beat, the next sh one beat, a one beat, and the last sh being held for two beats. The repetitions of s sounds evoke the warning of a spitting snake throughout the phrase. Then, the accent on the p produces another percussive pop.
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saxophones can have a mournful, aching tone, and they can sound soft but urgent. Unlike the large, curved saxophones mentioned in line 2, these instruments are shorter, and the soprano sax has no curve at all. They are the most expressive of the sax family and can easily replicate the sound of a whine high up in the trees, and at the same time cry out intensely over the absence of a lost loved one. The image rises to a fever pitch as a screaming trumpet play a squeal like that of a fast car fleeing a pursuing motorcycle cop with sirens blasting. With sadness there is now danger: gunfire erupts as the drums fire rapidly, loudly, piercing the ears. The entire ensemble of instruments blasts in unison, and more violence ensues. Two people are clawing at each other, fighting and scratching at each other’s eyes, tumbling in a ball to the foot of a staircase. The instruments wail and shriek, smash and crash, pound and batter as the combatants exchange blows.
Line 12–15 Sandburg shouts out to shut up, like an aggravated neighbor in the apartment next door with paper-thin walls and a baby fitfully sleeping. ‘‘Shut up in there!’’ he bangs on the plaster. ‘‘That’s enough!’’ It is the sound of fifty thousand blacks from the South crammed into Chicago in the span of just four years, from 1916 to 1920. Chicago is not the utopia they thought it would be: Jobs are scarce and living conditions deplorable. It is a hardscrabble life, and the music portrays the frenzy. A welcome contrast is introduced, and contrast is critical to jazz. It can soothe and calm, like a mother reading bedtime stories. Sandburg pushes on to the night sounds and images with a Mississippi steamboat chugging up the river at night. A bass saxophone bellows out the three low notes of the pervasive fog horn. Its whoowhoo-whoo-oo echoes on the banks. There is a pause, and rich imagery appears again to end the poem: The lights on the boat rise up to the heavens, meeting the sight of the moon, red with sunset, rising to the tops of the hills.
THEMES The Jazz Age
Line 7–11 The mood becomes increasingly more anxious now compared to the simple contentment of line 5, and the whining sound is high like the tender wail of a tenor or soprano saxophone. These
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The 1920s were the beginning of the Jazz Age, when musicians were experimenting with the earliest forms of jazz music. The sound came with the blacks migrating from New Orleans and mixed with the already established ragtime style. In
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Select a group of vocalists to perform the poem for the class. Be creative with the arrangement. Assign some voices to mimic instruments or the sounds of the steamboat. Add different pitches to the spoken words (thirds, fifths, or minor sevenths for a jazz sound). Have some voices echo others.
Rewrite ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ as a rap song. If possible, have other students join you as you perform it, to accompany you with beat box, drum, or dance. If you do not feel comfortable performing live, have someone record it with a video camera.
If you play an instrument, compose and perform a piece that has a jazz feel and represents the different sections of the poem. Pay close attention to the moods of the poem, when the rhythm picks up and the volume changes. Remember that you are trying to replicate the sounds of the city, with wild clamorous music and the night sounds of a slow steamboat chugging down a winding river. Burn a CD of the piece to play for the class. Write a poem about jazz. It can be about a concert you attended, a CD you listened to, or something you heard on the radio or performed in band. Pay close attention to rhythm, mood, sound, and imagery. Read it aloud, emphasizing these components.
Choose a poem from the collection The Jazz Poetry Anthology (1991) compiled for a young adult audience by Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa. Compare its themes and style to ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ in an essay.
Read the Coretta Scott King Author Honor winner Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Weatherford and Floyd Cooper. Compare the story of Holiday’s rise to jazz fame through pain, poverty, and discrimination to the joy of discovering jazz. Give a PowerPoint presentation about Holiday’s life and her importance in jazz history. Add pictures and sound to the slides.
‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ Sandburg praises musicians of 1920, who had just begun to play what was recognized as jazz. His recognition of the genius of the movement and the obstacles it had to overcome compels him to press for more, to congratulate the artists, and to exhort them to play on. Of course, Sandburg can take no credit for the jazz movement, but it is notable that a Swedish American poet would grasp the brilliance of the music that would affect nearly every aspect of modern American music from 1920 to present day. As a poet, he loved the way the music could summon images, evoke strong moods, and soothe the soul.
‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ was included, there are volumes of poems such as ‘‘The Harbor,’’ ‘‘The Halstead Street Car,’’ ‘‘Subway,’’ ‘‘Skyscraper,’’ ‘‘Work Gangs,’’ and ‘‘Broken Face Gargoyles,’’ which depict the sights and sounds of the city life of the new industrial America. His poem ‘‘The Windy City’’ portrays the growing pains of Chicago in 1920. In ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ the sounds are those of the back streets of Chicago. The reader imagines a fight breaking out in a honky-tonk, while all the percussion instruments bang and clamor in a frenzy.
Injustice Urban Life In his poem ‘‘Prairie,’’ Sandburg prophesies the coming of bigger cities with skyscrapers and a change from a rural to an urban society. In his Chicago Poems and Smoke and Steel, in which
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In Sixteen Authors to One, David Kasner writes that ‘‘Sandburg recognizes political material in . . . shovel stiffs, . . . politicians, diplomats, and the honky tonk.’’ Sandburg began his identification with the black man during his years as a
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Jazz trumpet player (Image copyright Karla Caspari, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
hobo, working alongside them as bootblacks (shoe shiners), porters, icehouse workers, and water boys. Harry Hansen, in Midwest Portraits, explains that they ‘‘seemed most addicted to balladry. Any outstanding catastrophe would lead some improviser to throw together a dozen or more clumsy quatrains telling the story of the event.’’ Sandburg saw the genius in this and adapted it to his folk song telling of stories that he later performed with his banjo. He is faithful to making a social statement with his poetry, and he firmly protests injustice, as he did when he covered the Chicago race riots. He also does this in ‘‘Jazz Fantasia.’’ Sandburg tells the jazzmen that because of their music, social equality is waiting for them.
own meaning. Words such as clang, crash, bang, and boom demonstrate the sounds they indicate. The clanging of the tympanic percussionists voices the cacophonous sounds associated with a backstreet fight that ends crashing down the stairs. The owl sound and the bee sounds are other examples of onomatopoeia. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ makes use of the device in a musical fashion. The word drum sounds like the noise the instrument makes. Banjoes can bang or strum. A tin pan can pound or swish. A bass drum can fire off booms like a bang of bullets from motorcycle or a loud backfire of exhaust.
Free Verse STYLE Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the use of a word that imitates the sound it makes. It gives richness and sensory perception to the poem as the word sound is its
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The poem is written in free verse, which means there is no strict rhyming or meter, a style characteristic of poetry before this time. Other poets who used free verse were Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and others who were considered modern poets. North Callahan quotes Sandburg in Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works as saying,
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Free verse is the oldest way. Go back to the Egyptians, the Chaldeans. The ancient Chinese were writers of free verse. . . . Read the orations of Moses, the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes for free verse. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the highest examples.
Much of the poetry written today is in free verse style. It allows for more emphasis on mood, imagery, and use of words that can create a tone. However, because ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is about music, and Sandburg was also a musician, there is a rhythm associated with the poem that cannot be analyzed by poetic meter.
Music has to have contrast in intensity, rhythm, and mood to be compelling. The volume of the poem shifts from moderate to loud to soft. Lines 1–6 are moderately loud, lines 7–12 rise from moderately to very loud, and lines 13–16 wind down softly. In a musical piece, the score would be marked mezzo forte, fortissimo, and pianissimo. The saxophones, banjoes, trombones, and sandpaper blocks contrast with the clamor of the percussion instruments, clanging the sounds of the city. The mood and image change quickly with the riverboat’s eerie night owl song.
Alliteration and Assonance Alliteration is a poetic device that uses the repetition of consonant sounds that appear close together in the poem. It is similar to rhyming, but the sameness of sound appears at the beginning of the word rather than at the end. This technique gives interest and delight upon reading aloud. Sandburg’s writing is designed to be read aloud—he uses alliteration in the consonants of repeated stressed syllables. The letters b, d, and s are prominently used in the alliteration of this poem. Assonance, or the repetition of a vowel sound, is often combined with alliteration. In this case, u is used after d, a is used after b, and i is often used after s. When the poem softens in tone and the sound of the blues sets in, t is used after s.
Personification Personification is a figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are treated as if they have human attributes or feelings. In ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ the saxophones are wailing and the trombones are weeping. The treetops are whining, a racing car screams, and the green lanterns on the steamboat appeal to the stars.
Simile A simile is a device used in literature in which one thing is seen as similar to something else, often by the use of the word ‘‘like’’ or ‘‘as.’’ Sandburg tells the jazzmen to groan like the wind in autumn and to scream like a racing car evading a motorcycle cop. He compares the booming of the drums and other loud percussion instruments to two people fighting, tearing at each other and scrambling down stairs.
Sound and Silence Sandburg uses sound in his poetry, and in ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ he wants his reader to hear a jazz song.
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HISTORICAL CONTEXT Industrialism The first line of Sandburg’s poem ‘‘Chicago,’’ published in Chicago Poems (1916), depicted the city as the world biggest slaughterhouse. This was a shocking description of the city to people who saw it as a rising industrial urban power in the United States. Sandburg did not intend to besmirch the city’s image but rather to describe it in simple terms, in the vernacular of the common people, about whom he was obsessively concerned. Chicago established itself early as a trade center, processing the products of the prairie, packing meat, milling flour, milling lumber, and transporting the products via its sophisticated rail systems. However, from 1870 to 1930, Chicago became a quintessential industrial center in America. With the rapid growth of the city, construction jobs and industry-creating construction materials began to abound. Artisan workshops were turned into manufactories, where skilled laborers taught apprentices to practice their trades. With the necessity to get work done faster and more cheaply, it was found that keeping the cost of labor down was paramount. The division of labor into small parts in order to reduce costs became the premise of industrialization. If a job once done by a master craftsman could be done in steps by unskilled laborers, the product could be produced much more cheaply. It also gave more power to the employer, who could control wages, labor market supply, advances in technology, and labor uprisings. Chicago in the 1920s was the model for industrialization, with central access and models for meatpacking, garment-making, and machinery manufacturing. As labor unions and populations grew, the landscape and steel skyscrapers
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1920s: Sandburg’s free verse style of poetry is not appreciated by most critics, as previous poetry was governed by rhyme and meter. His use of slang language in poetry is considered unfit for poetry, even though it is widely used by common people. Today: Sandburg’s free-verse, unrhymed, imagery-filled poetry is very much in keeping with today’s poetry. As Sandburg did, today’s poets make use of the fundamental element that links poetry and culture: music. Today’s ‘‘People’s Poets’’ are musicians working in rap, rock, hip-hop, country, and other popular styles. No language is off-limits, and rhythm—though not necessarily a regular meter—is imperative. 1920s: Jazz music is considered the music of the black working class, played in honkytonks or by street musicians. The term jazz is not yet universally used, and the sound is still very close to that of ragtime. Wilbur Sweatman and his Jass Band made the first true jazz recording by African American artists in 1916. A notable recording had been made a few years earlier by the allwhite Original Dixieland Band, but it is not
changed the face of America. Sandburg’s images of skyscrapers and the steel structures rising into the sky do not detract from the cityscape, but are inspiring depictions of the changing landscape of America. In ‘‘Prairie,’’ from Smoke and Steel, he writes that steel is made with a man’s blood, and the residual smoke that is released is the spirit leaving his body.
Poverty Having been born into a poor Swedish immigrant family, working alongside the poor in the most unexalted tasks gave the young Sandburg an immediate camaraderie with the most underprivileged of the working class. As he became
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considered the first jazz recording, only a copy of what was heard in the African American culture. Today: Jazz is one of the most widely enjoyed genres of music. It has evolved from its roots in blues and ragtime and spun off dozens of new genres, including swing or big band, cool jazz, bebop, pop, hip-hop, rhythm and blues, smooth jazz, soul, acid jazz, rap, and neolounge jazz. Jazz is commonly considered America’s classical music.
1920s: The images of the Mississippi steamboat in ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ portray the leading means of transporting goods in America. The first steamboat, the Claremont (built by Robert Fulton), had been put into use in 1807. The depiction of the steamboat in the poem is somewhat romantic, as more progressive means of transportation are becoming more prevalent. Today: Planes, trains, and automobiles have replaced the steamboat as means of transportation. Today, steamboat rides are available as nostalgic excursions, especially on the Mississippi and Colorado Rivers.
educated and respected as a writer, he never forgot that he was one of those people. Much of the dire poverty in Chicago was found in the slums of the black belt, the segregated area relegated to the black population, which had doubled in size in just four years to 190,000. Ramshackle living conditions, overcrowding, and crime were rampant. Residents of this area desired equal access to jobs and to comfortable housing alongside whites, but deep resentment and prejudice prevented this. They were made to feel unwelcome if they crossed over their boundaries, and they were sometimes attacked and beaten. Most of the houses in the slums of the south side of Chicago had at least six
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people in a one-bedroom apartment, often with no plumbing. Police felt that controlling crime in this district was a low priority, and they left the area virtually unprotected. Because most of the population of the Great Migration from the South had been sharecroppers who were poorly educated, they found it difficult to compete for jobs. Immigrants from other countries, such as Ireland, were flooding the city as well, and they were given preferential treatment. Blacks were not able to work in civil service jobs, and labor unions did not want to hire them, supposedly because they did not like to pay labor dues. Most blacks had to settle for domestic and personal service jobs, such as elevator operators, doormen, bootblacks, and servants. The most prestigious job was as a rail car porter for the Chicago-based Pullman Company. Union officials who manipulated the animosity between white union labor workers and often brought in blacks as strike-busters. Ultimately, when the strikes were settled, the blacks lost their jobs. Sandburg chose to work alongside poor black men, doing the same jobs: bootblack, rail yard worker, and gatherer of scrap metal. When he began to write, he became their voice and champion and ultimately was known as the People’s Poet. As Hansen notes in Midwest Portraits, Sandburg writes about ordinary people. He recalls in listening to Sandburg that he talked of the letters sent to him from quarry workers, men in prison, a black man attending Harvard, sorority girls, the president of an insurance company, and the secretary of a labor union. Hanson recalls how he loved the poor; as Sandburg wrote, And then one day I got a look at the poor, millions of the poor, patient and toiling, more patient than crags, tides, stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night. And all broken humble ruins of the nations.
Racial Tension The second assignment that Sandburg received as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News was not an easy one. It was to be a series of articles concerning the social significance of the poor black neighborhoods in Chicago, which were bursting at the seams with those who had fled the South. It seemed a logical fit for him because of his concern for the downtrodden and unfortunate. He fairly reported that the situation was of great concern; the overcrowding, high rent for scant
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accommodations, crime, and poor job opportunities were serious concerns. He tried to appear optimistic as he praised the community for its racial pride, contributions to the war, educated leaders promoting social and economic institutions, cleanliness, and attitude toward progress. He argued that the goals of this community were just: equal access to jobs, education, and fair treatment. Race riots broke out in the city when a young black boy was stoned to death after crossing a segregated line at a city beach. Sandburg’s ‘‘The Chicago Race Riots’’ was published in the Chicago Daily News in 1919. He described the injustice in the events that had occurred as a multifaceted problem. The police officer who arrived at the scene refused to make any arrests. He said the policeman represented a government blind to Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, a struggle that had been won ‘‘sanctioned and baptized in a storm of red blood.’’ He added that another crucial cause of the incident was the place where it had occurred. Packingtown, where most of the white rioters were from, was an impoverished area of white laborers where crime was rampant. Sandburg divined that what had started as a racial crime had ended in a riot over labor. White union bosses were prejudiced against blacks and said they did not want to pay union dues. This problem intrigued Sandburg so that he spent many years working in and with labor unions to promote equality and solidarity.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Sandburg traveled extensively in the United States, reading and singing his poetry. In an anonymous article that appeared in 1921 in the Lombard Review titled ‘‘Carl Sandburg Reads Poems to a Large Audience,’’ the writer reports, ‘‘Probably the most enjoyable was ‘Jazz Fantasia’’’ (quoted in William A. Sutton’s Carl Sandburg Remembered). The reporter attributes the poem’s popularity to the fact that it was not heavy or obscure. The inflections in Sandburg’s voice when making the sounds of the instruments were so close to the sound of a jazz orchestra that it made the writer want to dance. Glen Pinkham, a speech professor at Sterling College in Kansas, writes, after watching Sandburg recite ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ to the university in 1931, ‘‘The hard jazz of
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In Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works North Callahan recalls that Maxwell Bodenheim, who had previously criticized Sandburg’s work wrote to him and said that Smoke and Steel was ‘‘ten hundred and ninety-three miles above’’ his other books. He had previously compared Sandburg’s poetry to a giant who had ripped apart a sunset and patched the holes in his dirty clothes.
Jazz saxaphone player (Image copyright Stavchansky Yakov, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
the 1920s from Chicago came alive’’ (quoted in William A. Sutton’s Carl Sandburg Remembered). He remembers it as the sounds of a big band orchestra heard through the voice of Sandburg. According to Sutton, ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ has been described as the perfect example of the romantic voice and sense of hearing that Oscar Wilde calls the ‘‘lying,’’ the telling of beautiful things with ‘‘Vocal Imagination’’ to convey ‘‘Poetic Art.’’ Harry Hansen reports in Midwest Portraits that some people have said they found no beauty or music in the reading of Sandburg’s poetry, but when read by Sandburg, with the rich intonation of his deep voice, the beauty was audible, and musical imageries resonated in it. He surprised the audience and carried them with him through his love lyrics, fantasies, grotesques, humoresques, and ballads to the city of smoke and steel. Sandburg was criticized for his use of free verse by the classicists when Chicago Poems was published, but since then he has been cited as the most accomplished poet using free verse. According to Hansen in Midwest Portraits, Sandburg was put off by the judgments and set out to defend himself against scholars who said poetry must fit into a traditional mold.
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Sandburg had been praised by writers H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis; painter Georgia O’Keeffe; and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. However, Sandburg did not always receive the acclaim from critics and poets that he did in popular circles. Joseph Epstein in Pertinent Players writes that Ezra Pound, the leader of the modern movement in poetry, reluctantly invited Sandburg to contribute to an anthology. He wrote sarcastically to Sandburg that he was not sure whether Chicago Poems would not be better received if it ‘‘began six lines later and ended five lines sooner.’’ The New Criticism, a scholarly movement that came into prominence in 1940 and that focused on narrow readings of literary works, could not appreciate Sandburg’s rolling rhythms and colloquialisms. His reputation and popularity lagged, and his pocketbook and mental health suffered. Today, Sandburg has been rediscovered and has regained popularity. Poets and musicians alike now applaud ‘‘Jazz Fantasia.’’ It has been recorded, rapped, and danced, and it has been accompanied by jazz musicians. It is read aloud in classrooms, choreographed, and performed in poetry slams. For works such as ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ Sandburg holds the title of the People’s Poet in perpetuity.
CRITICISM Cynthia Gower Gower is a novelist, playwright, and freelance writer. In this essay, she shows that ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ by Sandburg was the first poem ever published about the true spirit of jazz. Langston Hughes has been widely acclaimed as the first true jazz poet, and there is little argument among critics that this is true. Hughes, a black poet of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote poetry unrivaled in its proliferation and depiction of jazz in the early 1900s.
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
‘‘Fog’’ is probably Sandburg’s most famous poem. It contains his rich imagery and urban theme but strays from his usual free verse. ‘‘Fog’’ and all of Sandburg’s poems can be found in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (2003). Hip-Hop Poetry and the Classics (2004) by Alan Lawrence Sitomer and Michael Cirelli won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. This one-of-akind workbook compares the writing styles of hip-hop artists with classic poets who have been studied for generations. Percy Bysshe Shelley is compared to the Notorious B.I.G. and Shakespeare to Eminem. Motifs, themes, and literary devices are studied with the goal of showing students the significance of classic poets on today’s lyricists while giving educators an appreciation for poetry they may have largely ignored. From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multi-Cultural Anthology of Poetry across the Americas 1900–2002 (2002) presents poetry from many racial and cultural backgrounds. This work, compiled by Ishmael Reed and edited by Francis Murphy, spans from
Hughes came upon the heels of Sandburg, encouraged by the publication of ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ to extend the form of jazz poetry. His first publication appeared in 1926, five years after the publication of ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ and he drew inspiration from it as the poem that first celebrated the true spirit of jazz. Sandburg has been classed with poets such as Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters, who were considered the voices of Chicago but not poets of jazz. Neither of these writers, nor any before them, wrote anything that referred to jazz as poetry or music, or the power jazz has to conjure deep emotion and express the soul. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ does exactly that. Jazz was not a standard, recognized term until 1920, the same
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pre-Columbian American works to modern hip-hop lyrics and features authors from Gertrude Stein to Askia Toure and many others. Jazz: An Introduction to the History and Legends behind America’s Music (2007), by Bob Blumenthal, is a concise paperback chronicling the jazz movement. It is a place to start for the unschooled but curious jazz enthusiast. Highly respected by important jazz artists such as Branford Marsalis, Blumenthal is an expert who writes from the perspective of the artists and their musical motivations. Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps, edited by Bill Aguado and Richard Newirth (2003), is a collection of verse written by at-risk and underprivileged teens. Like those of Sandburg, the poems depict a common-person approach to composition: there are rants (like his against the blights on the poor), raw themes that broach unpopular social problems, and rich metaphors. Titles such as ‘‘My Names Is Furious’’ and ‘‘I Am the Broken Pieces on the Floor’’ reveal the intensity and pathos of the adolescent mind.
year that the poem was published. No one had had the courage to present a work with that word in it to any publisher. It was considered vulgar, base, and inappropriate. In fact, ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ might never have been published had it not been hidden away in the collection Smoke and Steel. This collection followed Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, which also dealt with Chicago in the Industrial Age. Becoming a published writer was a privilege afforded Sandburg after he abandoned his days as a hobo and became a newspaper reporter, covering the Chicago race riots and writing essays about Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, at that time this opportunity would not have been given to Langston Hughes, as a poor black man.
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Percy H. Boynton, in Some Contemporary Americans, writes, ‘‘I remember vividly the mixture of disgust and contempt with which an official in an old eastern public library handed me a copy of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems just after the publication in 1916. He resented having to include it in the American poetry section.’’ This sentiment was shared by many, and Sandburg’s insistence on using what was considered crude, ‘‘brutal’’ language that connected him with the poor and common people was not readily embraced. Sandburg was poor, and his boxcar travels as a hobo throughout the Midwest were literally hand-to-mouth, throwing him in the company of the poorest of the poor, including many blacks. He was the friend to the downtrodden, and he keenly felt the injustice toward the poor. In his book Midwest Portraits, he tells of working alongside blacks and the friendships he had with them, recalling their names and those in the rail yards that he worked alongside. Here he first heard songs such as ‘‘Boll Weevil’’ and was so enraptured that he tried to imitate the voice of the black man in his poetry. He sat with blacks in the highest segregated balconies and soaked in every word and tune in the minstrel shows. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ is a bold attempt to legitimize this musical genre. Sandburg defined poetry as being about moods, noises, jumbles, and images of the city. This is the essence of ‘‘Jazz Fantasia.’’ Jazz today transcends the descriptions of a music style that swings, improvises, and adheres to a certain rhythm. It is more about mood, imagery, urban life, the rise of a culture, and music that gives wings to the soul. Today, jazz describes a musical genre that is emotional, soulful, and wildly improvisational, one that is intrinsically American, imbued with the passions and agonies of African American history. It is a distinct sound, played by particular instruments, and its roots run deep into the red clay of southern people who went north in hopes of a better life. Jazz was born in New Orleans and migrated north to Chicago at the end of the 1800s, when the red light district around 22nd Street in New Orleans, where many music clubs were located, was closed. Many bands resurfaced in Chicago, such as the Tom Brown Band, but they were not allowed to associate their music with the term jazz. Many sources trace the origin of the word to New Orleans. At the time, it was spelled jas or jass. The term was slang for sex and had inappropriate and seedy connotations with it.
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The story goes that in 1915, the Tom Brown Band took a job playing in Lamb’s Cafe´. In Chicago, labor unions ruled, and the band had not obtained permission from the local union official to work there. In an attempt to smear the band’s reputation, labor representatives spread a rumor around that jazz music was being played at Lamb’s Cafe´. The plan backfired when the word got around. People swarmed the club because they were curious about what this music really was. Of course, this was just the beginning of the music that has shaped the United States for over a century without taking a breath. Today, jazz encompasses many subgenres, such as blues, bebop, hip-hop, rap, and even beat box. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ has gained more popularity today than ever in its history. Jazz clinicians take the poem with them when they travel to teach the essence of jazz. It is a favorite piece in poetry slams. Vocal artists accompanied by jazz musicians have recorded it multiple times. There are audio downloads of ‘‘Jazz Fantasia’’ available as a vocal reading by dozens of artists, all with differing interpretations. Music teachers use it as a vocal class project, assigning the vocal sounding of the jazz instruments to some and echoes of the sound words in dual pitches to others, while one student reads the text. The poem has been incorporated into samba music. ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ written in 1919 and published in 1920, was a visionary prophecy of an art form that would be prominent in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry, music, and culture. Source: Cynthia Gower, Critical Essay on ‘‘Jazz Fantasia,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Bernard Duffey In the following article, Duffey compares the poetry of Carl Sandburg with that of his contemporaries. No one of the three notable poets spawned by the Chicago literary renaissance of the second decade of this century can be said to have fared very prosperously at the hands of later times. Vachel Lindsay, haunted during his life by a resonantly idealistic vision of possibilities inherent in American life, now seems a proclaimer of apocalypse too unreal for more than rhetoric and gesture. Edgar Lee Masters (the reportorial impulse of Spoon River Anthology apart) is surely a failed poet, one lost in a cloud of variously colored romantic posturings, a writer to whom his work was more self-indulgence than either art or expression. Carl Sandburg, in comparison,
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NATURE IN HIM HAS BECOME SIMPLY LANDSCAPE, AND, APART FROM THE DISTANCE, THE REMOTENESS OF ITS BEAUTY, IT IS MADE TO SUGGEST NO REDEMPTION. EQUALLY IN SANDBURG TIME IS NO HEALER.’’
seems more durable. He is in print. His memory has called forth centenary observance. He has had a special stamp struck off in his honor. He is something, at least, of an institution. But even this degree of survival presents something of a puzzle. He is, in a predominating view, no more than a schoolroom poet, ‘‘populistic,’’ ‘‘sentimental,’’ and yet one who affords leads to suggest to the children that poetry may be contemporary in interest and personal in form. His work is visibly there, on the map of American literature, yet it is hard to call to mind any criticism of it that has succeeded in giving it major character. Allowing for all this, and conceding that few feel any pressing need for a Sandburg revival, I want nevertheless to take some exception to our willingness to give his poetry a no more than marginal place in our sense of twentieth century writing. Sandburg certainly stands wide of the major thrusts of both the writing and criticism of poetry in our time. . . . He was engaged in the same pursuit of the native which occupied his two Chicago contemporaries, but I want in fact to argue that unlike them he located a poetically constructive imagination of the land in and for which he wrote. His voice gains authenticity when it is considered across its breadth of utterance, and I would find it difficult to make this claim for either Masters or Lindsay. Unlike the latter, his is only occasionally the effort at poetic beatification, and unlike the former he is largely guiltless of ingrown maundering. Instead, I shall argue, though Sandburg shared a certain tentativeness and openness with his contemporaries, he in fact fashioned and for the most part held fast to a close and living sense of the native, one congruent, finally, with his land’s own aspect. What emerges from the whole poetry, in this view, is wholeness of perception, one rooted in a
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consistent feel for a land conditioned by a problematic history and filling a landscape difficult to redeem by transcendental gesture. His scene is peopled with the kind of minor movers and doers who in fact have so largely occupied it, and who have little choice but to take their character from the land’s own spatial and temporal indeterminateness. (pp. 295–96) In place of the anthology favorites, it is the total fabric of the poems that might now claim attention, beginning with the sense of historical time that prevails in it. Unlike the Whitman he admired, for example, Sandburg’s history is one that has no sequential redemptions built into it except, perhaps, for the isolated figures it throws forth from time to time (Lincoln is the great case). Even here, however, history seems to have left him with no more than Eliot’s Quartets also says it leaves, a symbol only, a remembered reality for our possible use rather than any guarantee of redemption. (p. 296) The Complete Poems, from beginning to end, is studded with observations of place that, across their breadth, can best be characterized negatively, as the absence of any romantic power in nature resembling, say, Emerson’s feeling for spirit; and the absence also of the historically bred sense of homeland, of place that has been given its character by deep, repeated actions of will. Landscape for Sandburg is most often simply here, or there, and no more. Instead of the rooted place, there is the open Midwestern landscape known to every eye. It appears most often as prairie. The occasional drama of hill, or forest, or river is seen only seldom. Habitation, rather than dwelling, is the rule. Apart from prairie, and unpredictably, an empty and ever shifting waste of water takes a large place in the poet’s work; and he is fascinated over and over again by the palpable impalpable presence of mist. All present themselves as what may be called durations of space, something stretching out in undetermined vectors of distance. Perhaps the commonest humanizer of landscape in Sandburg is that of response to its beauty, but if we are to understand the sense of beauty that moves him we should beware of easy responses. His is perhaps a little nearer to the negative sense of the sublime than to the beautiful itself, to that which confronts observation almost as an alien realm to be tested in a tremor of mind and feeling rather than received in congenial warmth and pleasure. He seems more often to be haunted by
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the land than at home in it, and his verse becomes that of a man against the sky to whom connections and relations are inapplicable. . . . The aesthetic in Sandburg is a mode of seeing and feeling that by its nature precludes other participation. It is a mode that asserts itself by negating action or ready involvement, and the poet can be explicit on the point. (p. 298) But it is a third aspect, the problem of action that must engage us especially, a question that in Sandburg and across the breadth of much of what is called ‘‘modernist’’ poetry raises complicated questions stemming from the fact that the poetry of our time, like so much of its fiction and drama as well, has been a literature of what is felt to have happened to us rather than of what we have done. In this regard, Sandburg seems distinct from his contemporaries most plainly by reason of his own willingness to build whole sections of his poetry upon action in the world. The characteristic of our times, however, has been a contrary one, seeking decision for the poet rather in his action as poet. To swing sharply away from the Chicago ambience, we think of Sandburg’s contemporaries like Pound, Eliot, Crane Stevens, of Williams as devisers of poetics almost as much as achieved poets. Each of them puts a major effort into the theory of poetry, their deep involvement in what it is to act as a poet. Sandburg’s concerns, to the contrary, flowed almost entirely into practice so that poetry for him became simply expression rather than the act of its definition. It is expression that his own slender essays, ‘‘Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry,’’ or the ‘‘Notes for a Preface’’ to the Complete Poems, largely insist on. As a result, action in Sandburg has largely to inhere in what he could find to be action outside his poetry, in his own witnessing of action; but such witnessing could only be structured on what were two impediments to active fulfillment and meaning, those of indeterminate time and indeterminate space. (p. 299) The land of Sandburg’s expression is undetermined in time and space alike. It is widely open and calls out for filling. But the actions which the poet seeks in it can only share the fate of the land itself and so share in the indeterminateness of history and landscape. (p. 300) Rather than action, Sandburg’s land is supplied most often with potentialities of action, and often with potentiality that is explicitly arrested. His interior distance, again, is that of standing at
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some remove, of finding the land which has encompassed him and generated his poems to be itself less than encompassable, a milieu in which he can resume motion only toward his own indeterminate ends. (p. 301) What emerges from all this I want to suggest is a poetic vision seeking escape from easy idealism, from resolution by willed environment. Such direction sets Sandburg apart not only from his Chicago fellows but, if I may risk such generalization, from any of the prevailing poetic imaginations of America. In our national history there have been three reliances or references poetry has chiefly invoked to resolve the scattered picture the land presents. The first may be called resolution by landscape, or more properly, by a spiritually informing nature. This is the way, most familiarly, of the Emerson of such essays as Nature itself or of ‘‘Self-Reliance.’’ The second is resolution by time. It is the resolution most fully invoked by Whitman and given its fullest statement in the reliance of ‘‘Song of Myself’’ on the evolution of a self, standing outside of culture in its democratic openness, away from the tentativeness of its beginnings and toward self-reliance and a reliance of selves on each other, but all in turn relied upon through faith in the material thrust of reality, of time’s passage toward resolution. The third is that of action, voiced variably across our writing but one presenting great difficulties to the modern. In the poetry of our times, it has most notably found expression in the poet’s feeling for his art itself as redemptive act. This, at any rate, would seem to be the resolution sought by Hart Crane in The Bridge and alternately sought for and despaired of by William Carlos Williams in Paterson. Sandburg, I suggest is a fourth case, that of recognizing and instituting the undetermined itself. Nature in him has become simply landscape, and, apart from the distance, the remoteness of its beauty, it is made to suggest no redemption. Equally in Sandburg time is no healer. The redemptive hope on which Whitman rested his vision of evolution has become the reiteration of something that now is felt to be no more than process, action subsumed by time and space, which, in themselves, afford no definition. (pp. 301–02) Perhaps no one could wish really to classify Sandburg as a naturalistic writer, but I may conclude by suggesting that his sense of time, space, and action, all three, forms a sort of protonaturalistic poetic vision, a landscape in which event
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and endurance provide the basic parameters of his vision as, he suggests, they provide such parameters for existence in his world. He holds back from willed ideality in favor of shaping that world close to the spectacle it most commonly presents. (p. 303) Source: Bernard Duffey, ‘‘Carl Sandburg and the Undetermined Land,’’ in Centennial Review, Vol. 23, No. 3, Summer 1979, pp. 295–303.
Gay Wilson Allen In the following excerpt, Allen examines the literary reputation of Carl Sandburg. In 1950, at the age of seventy-two, Carl Sandburg published a collected edition of his poetry called Complete Poems. It was a heavy volume, running to nearly seven hundred large pages and spanning a generation of poetic output, from ‘‘Chicago,’’ first published in Harriet Monroe’s Poetry in March, 1914, to the great elegy on Franklin Roosevelt, ‘‘When Death Came April Twelve 1945.’’ In his ‘‘Notes for a Preface’’ Sandburg wrote, ‘‘It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine, as did Hokusai, and speaking my farewell to earthly scenes, I might paraphrase: ‘If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.’’’ Sandburg’s most severe critics would probably grant that he is a ‘‘writer,’’ even a gifted one, but whether he deserves to be called ‘‘poet’’ is still disputed. (p. 315) The ‘‘puzzlement’’ experienced by critics thirty years ago becomes even more persistent now after Sandburg has completed his fourscore of years. To some extent this is the natural consequence of the shift in sensibility of both poets and critics during the past three decades, but it is also in part the result of the literary role that Sandburg chose for himself at the beginning of his career, as the reception of his Complete Poems demonstrated. It was widely and prominently reviewed, but reviewers betrayed by their words that they had not read the book; indeed, had hardly read Sandburg since the 1920’s or 1930’s, for the man they wrote about was the theatrical, self-conscious ‘‘Chicago poet’’ and the optimistic affirmer of The People, Yes. There was one exception; Louis D. Rubin, Jr., began his perceptive critique in the Hopkins Review: It seems to me that the critics who most dislike the poetry of Carl Sandburg do so for precisely the wrong reasons, and that those who praise Sandburg’s work do so for equally mistaken
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reasons. What is bad in Sandburg is not his poetics, but his sentimentality. And when he is good, it is not because he sings of the common people, but because he has an extraordinarily fine gift of language and feeling for lyric imagery.
This is an admirably clear statement of the problem. And readers will either learn to distinguish the poetry from the propaganda and sentimentality or Sandburg’s name will fade from the history of twentieth-century poetry. In old age he is still one of the most vivid personalities on the American scene, but his reputation has suffered in almost direct ratio to the rise of Eliot’s and Pound’s, both members of his own generation; and this is unfortunate, for he has written some poetry that deserves to live. Sandburg’s early role as the poet of Chicago and the sunburnt Midwest helped him gain quick recognition. What might now be called the ‘‘Midwest myth’’ was then in formation, and he found it both convenient and congenial. In part this myth was the final phase of American romantic nationalism. Emerson, in his historymaking ‘‘American Scholar’’ address, called for literary independence from Europe; in the twentieth century a group of Midwestern writers adapted this threadbare doctrine to mean liberation from the cultural dominance of the Eastern United States. There were, of course, new experiences and environments in the region demanding newer literary techniques and a retesting of values and standards, and in the novel especially these needs were met with Realism and Naturalism which yielded stimulating and beneficial results. (pp. 316–17) Here is the myth: other cities are ‘‘soft’’; Chicago is brutal, wicked, and ugly, but to be young, strong, and proud is more important. In the first place, Chicago was not unique in its brutality or virility. For social and moral degradation, New York, Boston, or San Francisco could equal it, . . . and for business enterprise and physical expansion, Cleveland, Dallas, Seattle, and a dozen other cities were as dynamic. However, for the first three decades of the twentieth century the Midwest did produce more writers (notably, Anderson, Hart Crane, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Masters, Lindsay, Frank Norris) than any other region of the United States, thus supporting the notion that the East was effete and that cultural vitality was shifting to midcontinent. A more unfortunate influence on Sandburg’s poetry than his acceptance of the Midwest myth was his own private myth, in which only the poor and oppressed have souls, integrity, the right to
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happiness, and the capability of enjoying life. There are only two classes in Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, day laborers and ‘‘millionaires.’’ He is contemptuous of the millionaire’s ‘‘perfumed grief’’ when his daughter dies, but ‘‘I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.’’ Certainly a poet has a right to his sympathies, perhaps even a few prejudices—in which no poet could rival Pound. What is objectionable in Sandburg’s attitudes and choice of subject in his early poems is his use of stereotypes and cliche´s. In ‘‘The Walking Man of Rodin’’ he finds ‘‘a regular high poem of legs’’ and praises sculptor for leaving ‘‘off the head.’’ This is one of Sandburg’s worst stereotypes, leaving off the head, ‘‘The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.’’ Consequently, in the 1930’s, when proletarian sympathies were valued more than artistry or universal truth, Sandburg’s reputation as a poet reached its highest point. . . . In the 1950’s, when social protest was less popular or even suspect, most serious critics simply ignored Sandburg. Perhaps, however, this is the most propitious time for a re-evaluation, for discovering exactly what as a poet he is or is not. Sandburg is not, whatever else he may be, a thinker like Robinson or Eliot; not even a cracker-barrel philosopher like Frost. So far as he has a philosophy it is pluralistic, empirical, positivistic. He loves ‘‘facts,’’ and has made a career of collecting them to be used in journalism, speeches, biography, a novel, and poetry. Yet he is in no sense a pedant; his facts (when they are facts and not prejudiced supposition) are alive and pertinent, and he is usually willing to let them speak for themselves. ‘‘What is instinct?’’ he asks in ‘‘Notes for a Preface’’ (and the title itself is characteristic). ‘‘What is thought? Where is the absolute line between the two. Nobody knows— as yet.’’ He is still, he says, a ‘‘seeker.’’ He might be called a pragmatic humanist. Certainly he is not a Naturalist, who believes that human nature is simply animal nature; or a supernaturalist, who has an equally low opinion of mankind. Among his new poems is a satire on a contemporary poet, probably Eliot, who believes that ‘‘The human race is its own Enemy Number One.’’ There is no place for ‘‘original sin’’ in Sandburg’s theology. From first to last, Sandburg writes of man in the physical world, and he still regards the enemies of humanity as either social or political. Man’s salvation, he thinks, is his instinctive yearning for a better world; in the practical sense: idealism, the ‘‘dream.’’
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Source: Gay Wilson Allen, ‘‘Carl Sandburg: Fire and Smoke,’’ in South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 59, 1960, pp. 315–31.
William Loeber In the following excerpt, Loeber argues against the critics who classify Sandburg’s poetry as insensitive. Snobbishness is so characteristically an imperishable human trait, it is high time it came to be listed among the virtues. Even so universal an appreciation as the appreciation of literature is touched and tainted by this dry-rot of the critical attitude. Last week I read a paragraph by Dr. Felix E. Schelling, Phi Beta Kappa senator or whatever those elders are called, and luminary of the Department of English, University of Pennsylvania. His statement in substance was a tilt of the academic nose. He declared that Carl Sandburg need trouble no one especially; that Carl Sandburg represented the intellectual Tough, and that we could ignore him as we can ignore the Tough on the streets. ‘‘. . . he is just a man who sets out to find ugly things and to tell about them in an ugly way.’’ Perhaps, Mr. Sandburg would thank me but little for being irritated by such dusting of sensitive hands; perhaps he would prefer that I forget Dr. Schelling and his dusting; perhaps Mr. Sandburg welcomes the name of Tough. I don’t know. Better than that, I don’t care. For the moment I am interested in that kind of snobbishness in more or less authoritative pedagogic circles which tilts a nose at any literary expression which does not very obviously carry on the tradition of dead and honored writers. I suspect that Dr. Schelling spied the word ‘‘hog-butcher’’ and was shocked into a conviction which he could not change though he read every poem Carl Sandburg has ever written. We acquire our attitudes that way. Believing this, I reread Sandburg’s three volumes, Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, and Smoke and Steel. I assumed that Dr. Schelling was willing to dust Sandburg off his hands because of the words Sandburg used and not because of his ideas and imagery. Consequently, if a poem held words or combinations of words like ‘‘traffic cops,’’ ‘‘soup,’’ ‘‘shoe leather,’’ ‘‘Philadelphia,’’ ‘‘mister,’’ ‘‘coffee cups,’’ ‘‘summer shirt sale,’’ ‘‘scissors,’’ ‘‘cheap at the price,’’ words most pertinent to life but, to the professors, quite out of place in an emotional reflection of life, I checked off the poem as a tough-ugly poem.
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The result was interesting. Out of the 441 poems in the three books, 199 were tough and 242 could not, I think, even by Dr. Schelling, be considered as tough. I tried to be careful. It frightened me, I was so careful. If a word suggested the least toughness, it threw out the entire poem. In Chicago Poems, I learned that only 45 out of 101 were tough; in Cornhuskers, 53 out of 103; in Smoke and Steel, 104 out of 192. Mr. Sandburg seems to be growing tougher with each book; but my research shows him still on the side of the academic angels. The point of the matter is, I think, this: it would be absurd for Mr. Sandburg to adopt a set of words foreign to the life he is attempting to express. It is indicative of a rare sincerity that he courageously uses those very words which vitalize his images. And it is ridiculous for his admirers to apologize for him—and some of them do— because it is believed he sometimes writes under the influence of the ‘‘he-man’’ ‘‘eater-of-rawmeat’’ dramatization of his personality. I have the conviction that Mr. Sandburg writes just how it feels for him to be alive. As far as it is humanly possible, he uses those words which are for him the most expressive of his inspiration. And if his choice of words shocks the sensitive, it discloses not so much a lack in his ability to make poems as a limitation in the ability of the academically sensitive to read them. Whatever the frock-coats think of the clothes Mr. Sandburg’s poems wear, there is in the heart of each of them, as Sherwood Anderson has suggested in a recent Bookman, the ‘‘sensitive, naive, hesitating Carl Sandburg, a Sandburg that hears the voice of the wind over the roofs of houses at night, a Sandburg that wanders often alone through grim city streets on winter nights,’’ a Sandburg that knows and loves his people and their cities. It smacks of an alopogy for what the literary touch-me-nots name the ‘‘hairy Sandburg,’’ to mention the ‘‘sensitive Sandburg.’’ But I am not apologetic. (Opposing for a moment an attitude, I am forced to divide a poet up.) In all of Mr. Sandburg’s poems, those which I like and those which I do not understand, I find the poet Sandburg—essentially the only Sandburg—gripped by indignation, sense of beauty, joy, grief. And that crystal quality of the penetrating poet-eyes, of the warm poet-heart, lifts him quite out of any torpid, heavy-shouldered, thick-necked Tough class,
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whether he hog-butchers or waves a lily, whether he jingles ‘‘loose change’’ or whispers. . . . Unfortunately, you see, for the hand-duster, Carl Sandburg is human, like the rest of us, too human for academic exclusiveness to welcome as poet; especially since, even as poet, he must talk like the particular kind of human being he is— his language so deeply a part of him, he cannot change it to suit the conventions of the classroom, and do it honestly. Best of all, if he can, he defiantly refuses to change it for special occasions, for special ears. Consequently, it seems to me, he becomes a kind of precious thing to people; because he is able to talk for them and in the words of their mouths. When people go hunting for an expression of those dreams and hopes and beauties they are less articulate over than ‘‘home and mother’’ conventionalities—and it is only a minority who ever do—I have an idea they can come to know Sandburg better than any other of today’s poets. If they try to meet him. Handdusters—and it is painful that so many of them are in a position to present their attitudes to the gullible with as much authority as impunity— insinuate that he is a Tough—a literary Tough, not altogether the proper sort to meet. There is something grossly humorous about it, and something bitter. Source: William Loeber, Review of Chicago Poems, in Cornhuskers, Vol. 3, No. 14, February 1922, pp. 105–107.
Paul L. Benjamin In the following excerpt, Benjamin classifies Sandburg as an everyday poet. The poetry of Carl Sandburg, the poet who loves the common folk, and who weaves into the meshes of his song the simple, homely things of life—the Kansas farmer with the corn-cob between his teeth, the red drip of the sunset, the cornhuskers with red bandannas knotted at their ruddy chins—cannot be shredded apart from Carl Sandburg, the man. Indeed, as I write I seem to be chatting with him about his work and about the moving things of life, the deep, rich things, of running waters, of companionship with birds and trees, of love and tenderness, of life among those who sweat and toil—those secret, hidden things which only those who are ambassadors to men can truly know and understand. I see him leaning across the table in the little Italian restaurant, the most human, the most intensely alive man I have ever known. It is his
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IT IS, HOWEVER, THIS POETRY OF THE COMMON-PLACE, THIS ABHORRENCE OF BOOK-LANGUAGE, THIS RELIANCE ON FOLK IDIOM, THIS PICTURING OF THE SIMPLE, HOMELY THINGS THAT INTERESTS US NOW.’’
face that is arresting—beautiful as the faces of strong men are beautiful, as Lincoln’s is—a brooding face—gnarled and furrowed—cleft chin—a mouth that loops itself into smiles or that booms with deep laughter—‘‘granite’’ eyes that glow—steel gray hair. Though strong and compelling, and though inevitably the conversation whips about him he has something of the artlessness of the child combined with that uncanny directness and simplicity which children possess. As he talks you feel the touch of greatness upon this modest, lovable companion; you feel that he is one of those rare spirits who know back alleys, newsboys and farmhands, the crooning of the prairie, and the dust of the long road. You see him leaving school at thirteen to be buffeted by the prairie blizzards as he drives a milk wagon, toiling in brick-yards, swinging a pitch-fork in the husky gang of the threshing crew, shoveling coal, washing dishes, soldiering during the Spanish war, working his way through Knox College. These vignettes of his life quiver in your mind as he talks—and what an infinite range of subjects it is. ‘‘Poetry,’’ I hear him say, ‘‘is written out of tumults and paradoxes, terrible reckless struggles and glorious lazy loafing; out of blood, work and war and out of base-ball, babies and potato blossoms. For me there is a quality of poetry in: ‘Quiet as a wooden-legged man on a tin roof’ or ‘Busy as a one-armed paper-hanger with the hives.’ That glove working woman the Survey featured once, talked a speech as vivid as Irish or Chinese poetry at its best. Something like, ‘When I look out of the window at night the evergreens look like mittens.’ She put a fine, wonderful, vividness of gloves and mittens en masse oppressing her life. One felt humdrum choking a soul of art—and so— tragedy.’’
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There are flashes in his conversation that tell of the painstaking, persistent effort that has given him a mastery of his tools; the growth from the rondeau stage to the perfecting of a gesture of his own, the critical judgment which has led him to discard a mass of his work, publishing only a modicum of what he has composed, the quiet determination to give his own imaginative treatment to the life about him, the compressing of limber words into creative art during the odd snatches of a busy journalistic career. All this is reflected in his two volumes of poems, Chicago Poems, and Cornhuskers (Henry Holt and Company), and in his magazine verse, for few persons present their slants at life so fully as does he in his work. One would hardly suspect this lover of vagabonds and of children, this journalist who writes with a tang and a verve, whose industrial studies and articles on the Chicago race riots have won wide recognition, this delightful companion with his genuine touch of humor, this scoffer at those who strut and preen themselves, of being one of our great American poets. Louis Untermeyer, one of the outstanding critics of contemporary poetry, considers that he ranks with the three greatest poets in these states—the other two being Robert Frost and E. A. Robinson. It is this same Sandburg who in 1914 won the Levinson prize offered through Poetry, and who in 1918 shared with Margaret Widdemer the five-hundred dollar prize of the Poetry Society of America. To those readers of the Survey who in English ‘‘Lit’’ have dissected poems with a forceps or measured them with a calipers, or who have been lulled by the tinkling of certain poets, much of Sandburg’s verse may not seem to possess the divine afflatus. Such readers may be bound by the inhibitions of culture. But come with an open mind and a love of freshness and vigor and kindly treatment and you will find that his poems possess a moving rhythm, a rhythm that brawls and roars at times, and then that can be infinitely tender and exquisitely sweet. He does not shrink from using limber words, from using the idiom of the alley, the racy slang of the cornfield, or the argot of the steel-mill. They have the rhythm of life, with deep undertones, with delicate shadings, soft melodies that stir an inner sense of beauty, emotional connotations that express profoundly more than the nice use of words or their masterly groupings, rhythms that suggest intimations of subtle music, melodies that
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haunt like stirrings among the leaves on autumn nights. . . . Somewhere Whitman says: ‘‘But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings.’’ So, those who feel melody which ‘‘unseen comes, and sings, sings, sings’’ will turn with recurring frequency to Sandburg. They will discover that there are certain poems; such as ‘‘Loam,’’ ‘‘Gone,’’ ‘‘The Road and the End,’’ ‘‘The Answer,’’ ‘‘The Prairie,’’ ‘‘At a Window,’’ ‘‘Joy,’’ ‘‘Between Two Hills’’ and many others which will become part of the dear, remembered things, some of them touched with heartbreak or a mist of tears. Though written in the so-called ‘‘new’’ forms these are handled with a masterly technique, particularly in the nice use of words, for it is evident that Sandburg loves words; he can caress them, make them rasp and burr, go on velvet feet, cry like the aching call of a bird to its stormlost mate, or whisper like the flutter of hidden wings. But the words are only a part of the pattern. One might as well brush the dust from a white moth’s wing or catch the elusive charm of a young girl’s loveliness as separate the words from the poem, no matter if done with consummate skill. It is, however, this poetry of the commonplace, this abhorrence of book-language, this reliance on folk idiom, this picturing of the simple, homely things that interests us now. With it, and this is probably most significant to readers of the Survey, is the humanness and simplicity of Sandburg, his use of social material for so many of his themes, his infinite pity and tenderness, his stripping bare of social injustices, and his love of the common folk. Edith Wyatt in a letter expresses much of it in the apt phrase, ‘‘Indeed he is a species of nature student of city life.’’ Many of these poems, ‘‘Cripple,’’‘‘Anna Ihmroth,’’‘‘Population Drifts,’’‘‘Mill Doors,’’‘‘They Will Say,’’ although for me not among his most delicate, beautiful pieces, are the ones which most justify an account of him here. Together with rhythm and a sympathy and understanding of life, is his ability to chisel a picture with a few bold, swift strokes, with a compactness and compression of language, with an intensity and singleness of vision, with an economy of words which gives a peculiar, at times startling effect to his images, an almost biblical brevity. . . . After all, Sandburg’s books are to be lived with, to finger over, to love as one does the faces
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of children or the caress of chubby fists, to go to when disillusionment threatens, to feel the great, throbbing, singing heart of America through all the inquisitions and repressions, to whiff the pungency of new-mown hay or the fragrance of the furrow turned by the plow, to catch the sweep of the prairie or the tang of the woods, or to see ‘‘the grey geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings.’’ A glimpse of the real Sandburg is a paragraph in his review of Ransome’s book on Russia, written for the Chicago Daily News: ‘‘And then going on as though the human race is essentially decent and sweet and out of the trampling of this vintage of blood and tears, out of a brute earth of cold and hunger, we will yet come through cleareyed with an understanding of what we want to make of the world we live in.’’ Source: Paul L. Benjamin, ‘‘A Poet of the CommonPlace,’’ in Survey 45, October 2, 1920, pp. 12–13.
SOURCES Boynton, Percy H., ‘‘The Voice of Chicago,’’ in Some Contemporary Americans, University of Chicago Press, 1924, pp. 50–71. Callahan, North, ‘‘The Poetry,’’ in Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works, 4th ed., Pennsylvania University Press, 1986, pp.80–103. Epstein, Joseph, ‘‘Carl Sandburg, ‘the People’s Poet’’’ in Pertinent Players, W. W. Norton, 1937, pp. 332–48. Hansen, Harry, ‘‘Carl Sandburg: Poet of the Streets and of the Prairie,’’ in Midwest Portraits, Harcourt, Brace, 1923, pp.15–91. Karsner, David, ‘‘Carl Sandburg,’’ in Sixteen Authors to One, Lewis Copeland, 1928, p. 145–55. Kirchner, Bill ed., Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 3–5, 7–15, 39–51, 53–61, 148–61, 559–64, 734–43, 766–89. Lowell, Amy, ‘‘Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg,’’ in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, pp. 139 –232. Sandburg, Carl August, ‘‘Man Child’’ and ‘‘The Auditorium,’’ in Always the Young Strangers, Harcourt, Brace, 1952, pp. 15–30, pp. 270–79. ———, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, rev. and expanded ed., Harcourt, Brace, 1969, pp. 3, 5, 7–8, 16, 33, 79, 175, 179, 271. Sutton, William A., ‘‘A Host of Encounters,’’ in Carl Sandburg Remembered, Scarecrow Press, 1979, pp. 75–273. Untermeyer, Louis, ‘‘Carl Sandburg,’’ in The New Era in American Poetry, Henry Holt, 1919, pp. 95–109.
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Yanella, Phillip R., ‘‘Sandburg in 1919,’’ in The Other Carl Sandburg, University Press of Mississippi, 1996, pp. 122–50.
FURTHER READING Bolin, Frances Schoonmaker, and Steven Arcella, Poetry for Young People: Carl Sandburg, Sterling, 1995. This collection of Sandburg’s poems is specifically geared to ages nine through twelve. It is illustrated with surreal drawings in ethereal shapes and warm tones that aptly depict the rich imagery of Sandburg’s poetry. D’Alessio, Gregory, Old Troubadour: Carl Sandburg, Wallace, 1987. This is an entertaining recollection of Sandburg’s last years. It depicts the aging poet as a member of the New York Classic Guitar Society by his friend of twenty years, syndicated cartoonist and guitarist Gregory D’Alessio. It
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includes anecdotes of Sandburg’s friendships and encounters with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, guitarist Andres Segovia, and actress Marilyn Monroe. Golden, Harry, Carl Sandburg, University of Chicago Press, 1988. A memoir and biography of Carl Sandburg, this book heaps lavish praise on him as a poet and biographer. Golden portrays Sandburg as a patriotic, down-to-earth author who has been overlooked by modern critics because of his forthright, direct approach to poetry. Sandburg, Carl August, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Harcourt, 1939. This biography won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1940. Sandburg’s research began as a passionate admiration for the sixteenth president after listening to old Illinois prairie men telling stories about Lincoln as a country lawyer. It is considered to be the most comprehensive and authoritative text on the beloved president.
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The Lotus Flowers ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT 1987
Ellen Bryant Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is the title poem in her 1987 collection. Both the collection and the poem focus on Voigt’s rural upbringing in Virginia. All the included poems are relatively short and filled with imagery related to nature. Most are also narrative poems, seemingly telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In this manner, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is a fitting title poem; it represents all of the stylistic and thematic qualities inherent in the collection in which it appears. In fact, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is also representative of the major themes that appear throughout Voigt’s entire body of work. These include the loss of innocence, fate, mortality, and the beauty and threat of nature. Stylistically, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ (and the collection in which it appears) stands apart from Voigt’s work. Where ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ and its eponymous collection are narrative (containing a story arc), most of Voigt’s work is lyric (less structured and more musical). Her narrative poems have been favorably compared to those of Robert Frost. Appearing in the third of seven poetry collections, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ was written at the height of Voigt’s career. Her work was best known during the late 1980s and into the 1990s and is read by students of contemporary poetry. A 2000 edition of The Lotus Flowers, released by Carnegie-Mellon University Press, remained in print as of 2009.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Voigt was born Ellen Bryant in Danville, Virginia, on May 9, 1943. Her mother, Missouri Zue Yeatts Bryant, was an elementary school teacher, and her father, Lloyd Gilmore Bryant, was a farmer. Voigt was raised on the family farm. From an early age, she exhibited a great deal of musical talent and became an accomplished pianist. Critics would later note the musical quality of her poetry. Voigt attended Converse College in South Carolina as a music major, but soon switched to literature, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1964. The following year, on September 5, 1965, she married Francis George Wilhelm Voigt, a college dean and educator who was also a corporate executive. The marriage produced two children, Julia and William. Voigt next attended the University of Iowa, earning her master of fine arts degree in both music and literature in 1966. While she was a student there, Voigt worked as a technical writer for the University’s College of Pharmacy. She then taught at Iowa Wesleyan College from 1966 to 1969. The following year she went to teach at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, where she created a low-residency M.F.A. in writing program. The pedagogical approach was quite successful, becoming the model for similar programs at Bennington College and Vermont College. Also while at Goddard, Voigt released her first poetry collection, Claiming Kin, in 1976. The book immediately secured Voigt’s reputation as a talented poet. After leaving Goddard in 1979, Voigt taught creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a post she held until 1982. In 1981, she also served as visiting faculty at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where she taught in an M.F.A. program similar to the one she had designed at Goddard. In 1983, Voigt released her second poetry collection, The Forces of Plenty. She also won a Pushcart Prize that year. In addition to her academic and writing career, Voigt has been a concert pianist and also a guest teacher at writing conferences, including the renowned Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her third collection, of which ‘‘The Lotus Flowers,’’ is the title poem, was published in 1987, the same year she was honored with the Emily Clark Balch Award from the Virginia Quarterly Review in recognition for her work. Five years later, Voigt released her fourth book of poetry, Two Trees. It was followed in 1995 by Kyrie. The book is arguably
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one of Voigt’s most successful collections; it was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle poetry award that same year. Her acclaimed essay collection The Flexible Lyric, was published in 1999. Voigt was named Vermont State Poet, a post she held from 1999 to 2003. She was also a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellow from 1999 to 2001. During this time, Voigt published her sixth collection, Shadow of Heaven (2002), which was also nominated for a National Book Critics Circle poetry award. From 2002 to 2005, Voigt was chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. Then, in 2007, Voigt’s sixth collection, Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976– 2006, was published. The volume was a National Book Award finalist. As of 2009, Voigt continued to write poetry and resided in Vermont.
POEM TEXT The surface of the pond was mostly green— bright green algae reaching out from the banks, then the mass of water lilies, their broad round leaves rim to rim, each white flower spreading from the center of a green saucer. We teased and argued, choosing the largest, the sweetest bloom, but when the rowboat lumbered through and rearranged them we found the plants were anchored, the separate muscular stems descending in the dense water— only the most determined put her hand into that frog-slimed pond to wrestle with a flower. Back and forth we pumped across the water, in twos and threes, full of brave adventure. On the marshy shore, the others hollered for their turns, or at the hem of where we pitched the tents gathered firewood— this was wilderness, although the pond was less than half an acre and we could still see the grand magnolias in the village cemetery, their waxy, white conical blossoms gleaming in the foliage. A dozen girls, the oldest only twelve, two sisters with their long braids, my shy neighbor, someone squealing without interruption— all we didn’t know about the world buoyed us as the frightful water sustained and moved the flowers tethered at a depth we couldn’t see. In the late afternoon, before they’d folded into candles on the dark water,
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I went to fill the bucket at the spring. Deep in the pines, exposed tree roots formed a natural arch, a cave of black loam. I raked off the skin of leaves and needles, leaving a pool so clear and shallow I could count the pebbles on the studded floor. The sudden cold splashing up from the bucket to my hands made me want to plunge my hand in— and I held it under, feeling the shock that wakes and deadens, watching first my fingers, then the ledge beyond me, the snake submerged and motionless, the head propped in its coils the way a girl crosses her arms before her on the sill and rests her chin there. Lugging the bucket back to the noisy clearing, I found nothing changed, the boat still rocked across the pond, the fire straggled and cracked as we fed it branches and debris into the night, leaning back on our pallets— spokes in a wheel—learning the names of the many constellations, learning how each fixed cluster took its name; not from the strongest light, but from the pattern made by stars of lesser magnitude, so like the smaller stars we rowed among.
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POEM SUMMARY ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ consists of two long stanzas and is written in free verse. Each long stanza, however, is divided, roughly in the middle, by an offset or broken line. In fact, in both stanzas, the broken lines occur between the eighteenth and nineteenth lines. The first stanza consists of twenty-nine lines, and the second of thirty. One of the poem’s central images, that of the water lilies, refers to the poem’s title (lotus flowers are a type of water lily).
Stanza 1 LINES 1–5
The speaker describes a pond’s surface as being of a greenish hue. Algae of a vibrant green color stretch away from the shore and the expansive, rounded leaves of the water lilies touch across the pond. The flowers themselves are white and sit atop the leaves like cups on saucers.
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In line 6, the speaker indicates that she is not alone, that there is a group of people who are bickering and teasing one another. Finally, they decide upon the biggest and most fragrant water lily. A few members of the group go out in a rowboat to retrieve it, rustling their way through the dense pond. However, they find that the lilies are rooted deeply to the bottom of the pond and the stems are incredibly strong.
The speaker then says that only the most resolved of the girls (here the gender of the group is revealed for the first time) dare to put their hands in the murky water in an attempt to wrench the flower from its stem. Without mentioning whether or not the girls were successful in their endeavor, the speaker then observes that they all row to and fro across the pond. They do so in small groups of two or three, taking turns. The girls are courageous and adventurous as they stand upon the muddy shore. LINES 16–20
The other girls call for their turn on the rowboat. Some of the girls are picking up wood for the fire over by the spot where they set up their tents. (It now becomes clear that the girls have gone on more than just an afternoon’s outing.) This is also where the line break occurs, between the mention of picking up firewood and the statement that they are in the backwoods. The implication here is that the girls are as wild as the woods that surround them. And yet, the pond is small. Here, the speaker seems to indicate that as wild as things may seem, the pond itself is somewhat tame; it is not as big or impressive as it seems. LINES 21–25
From their vantage point at the pond, the girls can still see the large magnolia trees that grow in the town cemetery. The large, coneshaped flowers on the trees are white and easy to spot among the greenery. Thus, the speaker’s assertion that they are wild, or in the wild, is immediately contradicted by the mention of visible signs of civilization. The speaker notes that there are twelve girls and that the oldest girl in the group is twelve years old. The speaker’s quiet neighbor is also there, as are a pair of sisters who wear their hair in braids.
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One of the girls keeps shrieking without stopping. The girls are held up and floated by their own innocence, by their ignorance of the world and how it works, just as the frightening water in the pond holds up the lilies. And yet, those lilies are tied to the bottom of the pond; a bottom that the girls cannot catch sight of. Given the halfcompleted comparison between the girls and the lilies, there is an implicit question: The flowers are held up by the water but deeply rooted in its bottom, and the girls are held up by their innocence, but to what are they rooted?
Stanza 2 LINES 30–34
It is now late in the afternoon, just before the lilies close up for the day. For the first time the speaker refers to herself in the first person. She says that she went to the spring to fill up the bucket. The spring is nestled below the pine trees and bubbles below their exposed roots. The roots form a sort of cave that is filled with black mud. LINES 35–39
The speaker states that she skimmed the pine needles and leaves from the top of the spring. Once the muck has been removed, she finds a crystal clear, shallow pool. It is so clear that she can see every rock at the bottom, could even count them if she wished. She then describes the shock of the cold water on her hand as it splashes onto her from the bucket. LINES 40–44
The cold makes her want to stick her hand into the pool, and she does so. She holds her hand there; at first the cold comes as a shock, and then it numbs her. She gazes at her fingers and then at the pool’s edge. (Here, the speaker seems to indicate that her numb fingers have become something apart from her, something she looks at with indifference, just as she does the pool’s edge.) Yet, there on that ledge lies a snake. It is just beneath the water and is not moving. LINES 45–49
The speaker says that the snake is coiled up, resting its head on its body just as a girl would rest her head on her arms. Here, the second line break occurs, and the speaker states that she is carrying the bucket back to the raucous campsite. No mention is made of the snake or of whether or not it
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attempted to strike. Nevertheless, it is clear that the speaker has returned to her group unharmed. At the campsite, she finds that all is the same. This statement seems to imply, however, that the speaker has experienced an internal change, one she (mistakenly) expects to find reflected in the world around her. LINES 50–54
When the speaker returns to her group, she finds that the boat is still moving over the pond. When the speaker rejoins the other girls, she no longer refers to herself in the first person, but only as a part of the group. The campfire roars and spits as the girls throw trash and wood into it and into the darkness. They are lying back on their sleeping bags, arranged like so many parts of a wheel. LINES 55–59
The girls are looking up at the night sky and learning what each constellation is called. They are also learning the myths behind each name. The speaker notes that the constellations are not derived from their brightest star, but from the lesser stars and the form they take as a group. These dimmers stars, the speaker finds, are much like the lilies through which they rowed their boat.
THEMES Innocence Innocence and its loss are a major theme in ‘‘The Lotus Flowers.’’ This innocence is underscored in numerous ways, particularly in the natural surroundings in which the girls find themselves. The poem could be an idyll, a short verse or painting depicting the virtues of rusticity. The term idyllic is derived from this art form, and Voigt’s poem is nothing if not idyllic. There is an idealized innocence to the water lilies and to the girls’ attempts to pick them. The girls believe themselves to be great adventurers out in the wild. Yet the town cemetery and its magnolia trees are within sight. This contrast between belief and reality also belies the girls’ innocence. The girls’ hollering for turns on the boat, their gathering of firewood, their campsite, and their discussion of the constellations, are all idyllic and filled with innocence. Furthermore, the girls are no older than twelve, some even with their hair in braids. They are decidedly children,
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Use the Internet to research Ellen Bryant Voigt and other contemporary women poets. How does Voigt’s life and work compare to that of her peers? What influenced each to write poetry? Do they share themes and styles? What subject matter seems to be common among them? Report your findings to the class in a PowerPoint presentation. Read any of the The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants young-adult novel series. Think about how the girls’ adventures help them grow as friends and as individuals. Compare and contrast the novel to Voigt’s poem in an essay. Read the entirety of Voigt’s book The Lotus Flowers. Prepare an oral report in which you discuss how the title poem plays a part in setting the tone for the entire collection. Interview women in your family, school, and neighborhood. Focus your discussion on times these women have spent with other women—how is it different from the time they have spent with their families or with men? Compile your findings in a detailed report written in an interview format.
albeit on the cusp of adolescence. As the speaker points out, their innocence and their ignorance of the way the world works allow them to float like the lilies in the pond. Nevertheless, there is also a darker undertone to the poem. The pond is murky; it is covered in algae and its water is black. Only the most courageous of the girls dares to stick her hand into it. While the girls are young, the oldest among them is nearly an adolescent, which signifies an impending loss of innocence in the face of aging, maturity, and burgeoning womanhood. The foreboding image of dark or black water is repeated again when the speaker travels alone to gather water. The spring, which is
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pure and clear, lies beneath black mud, beneath dead leaves and discarded pine needles. Here the contrast between pure and impure (innocent and not) is clear. More important, the snake that the speaker encounters recalls the snake in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In that story, the snake is the corruptor, the active agent in Adam’s and Eve’s loss of innocence. Here, the snake lies motionless, a harbinger of that loss. That the speaker is changed by her encounter with the snake is implicit in her observation that nothing at the campsite has changed.
Mortality Just as the poem is a depiction of innocence about to be lost, so too it is a meditation on mortality. Aging and loss of innocence go hand in hand, and what is aging if not evidence of mortality? Fate is also entwined in this thematic interpretation; loss of innocence, aging, and death are the fate of all of the girls. In fact, the only evidence of civilization in the poem is the cemetery. This is a striking choice, one that certainly underscores the overall sense of decay that permeates the poem. The water imagery in the poem also emphasizes this sense of decay, a decay that certainly signifies, or at least hints at, mortality. The pond is murky and black, even described at one point as frightful. Its depths cannot be seen. The spring, which is pure, a source of life, is nevertheless buried in black scum, a mulch of dead things that must be scraped away before its clarity is revealed. Nevertheless, while the spring is clear, its water is so cold it numbs the speaker’s hand, deadening it and draining the life and feeling from it. Even the danger inherent in the snake’s presence underscores the speaker’s burgeoning sense of her own mortality. The snake is motionless but coiled, and thus could easily strike. In fact, when the snake is compared to the innocent image of a girl resting her head on her arms, the incongruous simile makes the threatening nature of the snake all the more apparent. Even the stars and constellations seem to hint a mortality. Where they are lasting, the girls are not. Even the idyll of girls camping is doomed to pass away. They will age but the stars will not.
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Lotus flower (Image copyright qingqing, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
STYLE Imagery Because ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is set in nature, it is largely filled with descriptive language and imagery pertaining to those surroundings. It begins with a description of the vibrant green algae in the pond. The reader’s eye is led then to the blooms and leaves of the water lilies that float in the pond and to the waxy magnolia blossoms in the nearby cemetery. The description of the speaker’s solitary excursion to fetch water from the spring among the towering pines sets a different tone; all of the imagery during this section of the poem is dark and foreboding.
Simile A simile is a literary device in which one thing is compared to another, usually through the use of
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such linking words as like or as. The central simile in the poem occurs when the speaker spies a snake lying motionless with its head resting on its coils. She compares the snake to a young girl crossing her arms on a windowsill and resting her heard on her arms. The speaker also employs a simile when she says that the girls’ innocence holds them up just as the water holds up the lilies. Another simile occurs at the end of the poem when the speaker compares the girls laid out on their pallets to spokes in a wheel.
Metaphor Unlike a simile, a metaphor does not compare two things to one another. Instead, it attempts to make one thing into another. The lilies are described as teacups atop green saucers (their leaves). Later in the afternoon, as the flowers close for the evening, they are turned into candlesticks. In the last line of the poem, the lilies are stars.
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Point of View While the point of view in the poem is entirely in the first person, it is mostly expressed by the plural pronoun ‘‘we.’’ The speaker is part of a group of girls and refers to herself almost exclusively as such. She refers to herself as ‘‘I’’ only when she separates herself from the group and goes alone to find water. This interesting stylistic device underscores the tension between the speaker’s group mentality and her growing sense of herself as an individual. This assertion is proved by the speaker’s observation that nothing has changed upon her return to the camp site. Yet, the implication in this statement is that something has changed—the speaker herself.
Narrative Verse Put simply, a narrative poem is a poem that has a plot. Or, at the very least, it has a discernible beginning, middle, and end. At its most basic level, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ tells the story of a group of girls who go camping. They arrive during the day, set up camp, gather firewood, row across the pond, and attempt to pick water lilies. In the evening, they gather around the campfire and stare at the constellations. In the midst of this story is another story; that of the speaker, the girl who breaks away from the group in search of water. This is the story of a girl who strips away the flotsam atop a pure spring, who fills her bucket and numbs her hand in the frigid water, a girl who spies a snake and walks away unharmed.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Feminism While Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is not a feminist poem per se, it nevertheless portrays a group of girls participating in stereotypical male activities. Voigt was born in 1943, a time when millions of women worked outside the home for the first time in defense related industries. She reached adulthood in the early 1960s as more women began to question their roles and positions in the home, workplace, and society. She held significant positions in the literary and academic world at a time when it was largely dominated by males. The second half of the twentieth century saw the advancement of women’s equality in all aspects of society, and Voigt experienced many of these milestones. Although the first wave of feminism began in the late nineteenth century with the suffrage movement (securing women’s right to vote), it
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was not replaced by the second wave until the 1960s. That second wave lasted until the 1980s, the same period of time during which Voigt established her literary reputation. Second-wave feminism focused on women’s equality in society and also on sexual equality. The sexual revolution was in no small part spurred by this; women’s desires were examined in light of the fact that they were increasingly seen as equal to men. Women at this time fought for equality and recognition in the workplace and also in the household, where women’s roles and contributions had largely been taken for granted. Furthermore, second-wave feminism made great strides in assuring equal access to education for women, as public funding for single-sex schools was abolished. In the 1990s, third-wave feminism emerged to address the remaining iniquities between men and women. One such persisting issue is wage disparity. However, the movement itself is largely at a crossroads as to its future. Some contemporary feminists believe that the movement has mostly catered to the needs of the middle class, particularly middle-class Caucasians, and that it thus overlooks specific issues relevant to minority groups.
Narrative Poetry While narrative poetry is a specific style of poetry, it is also a poetic tradition steeped in history. In fact, narrative verse is probably the oldest form of poetry. Before the advent of the written word, stories were committed to memory and transmitted orally. To aid in this endeavor, they were set to verse and even to music. Thus, the earliest known literary works owe their provenance to narrative verse. Take for instance Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which date from roughly 800 BCE . Other ancient examples of narrative verse include the epic Gilgamesh; the earliest written version dates back to around 700 BCE . Narrative poetry was also prevalent in medieval Europe; one English example of this is Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which was written in the fourteenth century. Other wellknown literary figures to employ narrative verse include William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and Robert Frost. Narrative verse can also be used in plays, as in Shakespeare’ works and in ancient Greek drama, and it is employed in such poetic forms as idylls and ballads.
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1980s: Although Voigt’s work is not explicitly feminist, her poem portrays only girls, and she herself is remarkably successful in a maledominated field. Supporters of women’s rights in the 1980s are known as secondwave feminists. First-wave feminists won suffrage (women’s right to vote, established by the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), and second-wave feminists focus instead on cultural discrimination, including wage disparity. Today: Feminism has not taken any cogent form since the establishment of third-wave feminism during the 1990s. If anything, feminism continues to struggle to define itself given the social, cultural, and political strides women made into the twenty-first century.
1980s: Women’s Studies becomes an accepted field of study in major universities across the United States and a few begin to establish feminist research institutes. Scholarly journals begin to write about feminist
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Although ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ has not been widely reviewed, the collection in which it appears has been. For the most part, critics have been laudatory in their assessments, pointing out Voigt’s pet themes and the characteristic attention to detail with which she addresses them. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Laura B. Kennelly concludes that in The Lotus Flowers, ‘‘Voigt writes with richness and maturity of her familiar concerns: the rural Virginia of her childhood home, the paradox of good and evil, and the relationships between mortal creatures who know they must die.’’ Additionally, Kennelly goes on to state that ‘‘stylistically Voigt’s poems are traditional in that she describes a scene or an image in musical phrases and lines.’’ Yet more praise is extended by Edward Hirsch in the New
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theory and by the end of the 1980s the U.S. Congress declares March to be National Women’s History Month. Today: By 2000 more than 700 universities offer Women’s Studies programs and the field of study expands to other countries in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
1980s: The influence of confessional poetry, which was at its most popular in the 1950s and 1960s, can still be felt. Free verse and first-person speakers remain popular stylistic devices. However, verse in the 1980s stands out in that it features a plethora of female and minority poets. Today: Although no definitive poetic movement has emerged in the early twenty-first century, free verse poetry continues to be a popular form of expression. It is rivaled by New Formalism, which heralds the return of more traditional and formal metric verse structures.
York Times Book Review. He calls the collection ‘‘a book of fierce regard and passionate attention’’ and adds that ‘‘Voigt’s poems increasingly meditate not only on what passes away but also on what survives, how the past determines and informs the present, how it infuses and complicates our adult experience.’’ He applauds ‘‘her complex allegiance to the dual countries of childhood and adulthood.’’ Some critics, such as Poetry contributor Peter Campion, have found Voigt’s style somewhat stagnant. He writes that ‘‘the short-storylike poems in The Lotus Flowers (1987), while cunningly constructed, seem to repose beneath a glaze. Voigt’s big temptation is to rely on her own mastery, to speak from above, instead of from inside, experience.’’ Thus, he concludes that ‘‘despite some enthralling moments . . . these poems suffer too often from such knowingness.’’
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Lotus flower (Image copyright Tatiana53, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Even Kennelly notes that Voigt’s style is secondary to her themes. She remarks that ‘‘fashioning the questions [Voigt] asks in her poetry seems more important to her than achieving new heights of technical virtuosity.’’ Despite this seeming complaint, however, Kennelly declares that ‘‘women, in particular, should see themselves as free to write in any tradition, feminist or not. . . . The positive critical reception of The Lotus Flowers suggests that Voigt has taken advantage of such freedom.’’
CRITICISM Leah Tieger Tieger is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she discusses the structure, themes, and symbolism in Ellen Bryant Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers.’’ In particular, she provides a textual explication of the poem. Textually, Ellen Bryant Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is a rich poem. Its diction (use of language) reveals its underlying themes, and its
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structure shapes its meaning. Although the poem is written in free verse, it is divided into two long stanzas of almost identical length (the first stanza is twenty-nine lines; the second is thirty). Both stanzas however, feature a broken line just past their first half, between their eighteenth and nineteenth lines. In the first stanza, the break occurs between the statement that the girls are gathering firewood and the statement that they are in the backwoods (a statement that later found to be erroneous). In the second stanza, the line break occurs between the observation that the snake is like a girl resting her head on her arms and the statement indicating that the speaker is carrying the bucket back to the campsite. In each case, the line break is disorienting. Furthermore, the breaks indicate a falsehood or at least an omission. In the case of the first stanza’s line break, the statement that the girls are in the wilderness is soon revealed to be untrue. They can see the magnolia trees in the town cemetery from the pond. The latter line break is somewhat more complex in what it attempts to obscure. When the threat of the snake is introduced, it is immediately downplayed by the simile comparing it to a mere girl. Then follows the immediate scene change, brought on by the speaker’s statement that she is taking the bucket back to the other girls. This change is made all the more disorienting by the line break. Furthermore, the speaker’s ensuing statement that she has found nothing changed indicates that something has changed, just not the other girls or their camp. The sense of disorientation brought on by the line break extends to this seemingly innocent remark—especially because it is not innocent at all. The structure of the poem is also misleading in that it is fairly regular. The line lengths (barring the aforementioned exceptions) are much the same, as are the enjambments (the line breaks occurring amid the same complete thought/sentence). Indeed, the poem is set at a natural rhythm. When read aloud, the line breaks occur at the end of a phrase or where one would naturally take a breath before continuing. For this reason, the speaker appears trustworthy; the seemingly simple and idyllic tale of girls camping is taken at face value. Where enjambment can often alter the poet’s intended meaning, or allow for numerous meanings to coexist, line breaks in ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ tend to avoid such confusion. In fact, the enjambment in the poem only alters meaning in the aforementioned line breaks and again when the speaker goes off by herself to get water. Thus, the breaks in the poem’s regular and measured
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
The 2005 edition of Read and Understand Poetry, Grades 5–6+ by Linda Armstrong and Jill Norris provides reluctant readers with insight into poetry and how to interpret it. This classroom aid is appropriate for middle grade and young-adult readers, and it provides an easy-to-read refresher for all students of poetry. Flora Davis’s 1999 book, Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America since 1960, presents an in-depth look at the second wave of feminism in the United States. She also explores the rise and fall of first-wave feminism as it pertains to the rise of the second wave. Issues regarding female sexuality and women in politics are also explored. The book features a detailed bibliography as well as interviews with numerous feminist activists. Given that Voigt’s verse has been compared to Robert Frost, another book appropriate for young-adult or reluctant readers is Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost. Edited by Gary D. Schmidt and Henri Sorensen, this 2008 edition of Frost’s poetry features twenty-five poems divided into sections inspired by each of the four seasons. Watercolor illustrations of pastoral New England scenes accompany the verses, as do notes on possible meanings and interpretations to be
structure serve to offset the most important and revealing instances of the poem’s meaning. Certainly, the central event in the poem is the speaker’s excursion for water. Again, there are textual clues to alert readers to this fact. For instance, the speaker uses the first-person plural pronoun ‘‘we’’ throughout the poem, signifying that she is a part of the group. Yet, when the speaker leaves to get water, she reverts entirely to the first person singular ‘‘I,’’ reasserting her individualism apart from the group. The enjambment
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gleaned from each poem. A biographical profile of Frost is also included. Homer’s The Iliad is a classic example of narrative poetry. The 2003 Penguin Classics edition, edited by E. V. Rieu, D. C. H. Rieu, and Peter Jones, is particularly well suited for students. Set during the Trojan War, the story portrays Greek heroes Achilles, Odysseus, and Agamemnon, as they fight the Trojans to reclaim Helen, Agamemmnon’s sister-in-law, from the Trojan prince Paris. Themes of mortality and fate akin to those in ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ can also be found in this epic poem. A multicultural approach to narrative verse can be found in the 2004 edition of the anthology Get Your Ass in the Water & Swim Like Me: African-American Narrative Poetry from Oral Tradition. The anthology, edited by Bruce Jackson, was originally published in 1974 and is a collection of African American verse and folk tales. In particular, the collection is hailed for its inclusion of the African American narrative folk verses known as ‘‘toasts.’’ Perhaps Voigt’s most famed collection of poems is her 1995 volume Kyrie. The book is possibly one of Voigt’s most successful collections, and it was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle poetry award in 1995.
in this section, as previously mentioned, plays the most with meaning. For instance, when the speaker plunges her hand into the cold water, she states that the shock of it is invigorating. Yet, in the following line, the speaker says that the shock that enlivens quickly becomes deadening, as her hand is increasingly numbed by the frigid water. In addition, the line breaks become quick and choppy when the speaker spies the snake, and they remain that way as she attempts to mitigate its threatening power by comparing it to an innocent girl. Also, because the
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poem’s main theme pertains to innocence and its loss, the snake’s presence in this blameless camping idyll is all the more fraught with symbolic meaning. The snake in literature can never be fully divorced from the story of Adam and Eve. In that parable the snake is the corruptor, the influential factor in Adam and Eve’s loss of innocence and their expulsion from the garden of Eden. It’s presence here is full of symbolic meaning. That the snake’s presence has influenced the speaker is undoubtedly hinted at when the speaker asserts that nothing at the camp site has changed, seeming to imply that she herself has changed. A similar instance of indirect statement and understatement occurs at the very end of the first stanza as well. There, the speaker declares that the girls are floating, held up by their innocence and ignorance just as the lilies are held up by the water. Two interesting inferences occur here. The water upon which the lilies float is described as murky and frightening. So too, then, is the girls’ ignorance. Everything that they do not understand about the world is equally frightening and murky. However, where the lilies are rooted deeply at the pond’s bottom, no mention is made of anything that the girls may be rooted to. The omission is a glaring one in that it presents a deep contrast between the rooted but buoyant lilies and the buoyant but unmoored girls. At the poem’s end, the girls lie arranged in their own constellation (in the spokes of a wheel) as they gaze at the stars and name them. Here too they are unmoored. The stars, floating in the ether, are defined by the patterns they make. The dimmer stars in this scenario are deemed as important as the brighter. From this statement, the speaker returns to the lilies, as she notes that they are grouped in the pond in much the same way as the stars (in fact, she even calls the lilies stars). They are all interconnected by their extensive root system, and they form constellations of their own. The poem is brought full circle here as well, as it opens with the girls’ attempts to pluck the biggest and brightest of the lilies. In addition, if the girls float in their innocence as the lilies float in the pond, and if the lilies are (or are like) stars, then it follows that the girls also are (or are like) stars. Source: Leah Tieger, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Lotus Flowers,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Steven Cramer In the following excerpted interview, Cramer discusses with Voigt the influences on her poetry.
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A LYRIC IS ENTIRELY ABOUT INTENSITY. IT’S ABOUT ALL OF IT SPIRALING IN, AND HOLDING THAT INTENSITY, AND NOT RELENTING. AND I THINK AS THE GENERAL POPULATION READS LESS AND LESS POETRY, THAT KIND OF ATTENTION IS HARDER AND HARDER TO PROVIDE.’’
‘‘I want to bring outdoors inside,’’ says Ellen Bryant Voigt in ‘‘Dooryard Flower,’’ a poem published in The Atlantic Monthly last March. That extravagant, paradoxical, impossible wish gets at the heart of Voigt’s poetic project. From her first book, Claiming Kin (1976), through each subsequent volume—The Forces of Plenty (1983), The Lotus Flowers (1987), Two Trees (1992), and Kyrie (1995)—Voigt’s poetry has reflected her restless search for the means to unite two artistic impulses: to sing and to tell stories. And because she never rests satisfied with a form she’s mastered, each time she strives to reconcile song and story, she does so in an unexpected way. Lapidary, emotionally charged lyrics; familial, mythic, and historical narratives; meditative poems linked to epigrammatic ‘‘variations’’; a sonnet sequence scored for multiple voices—Voigt’s work as a whole recites the tale of one artist’s ‘‘will to change.’’ Her subjects are often local—the woods, the backyard, the family plot, children, seasons—but her overriding concern is universal: choice and fate, and the tension between them that constitutes human life. This month Voigt publishes The Flexible Lyric, a collection of the critical essays she has been writing for the past fifteen years. The book is a passionate defense of the richness, variety, and ambition of the lyric mode, but it’s much more than that. The Flexible Lyric offers a portrait of a reader’s mind—one that can reveal the textures of a poem with microscopic precision and derive aesthetic lessons informed by bracing common sense. And it’s a celebration of poetic virtues that are also ethical virtues: clarity, strong feeling honed by intelligence, and what she calls a ‘‘relentless striving to be accurate.’’
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Born in Virginia in 1943, Voigt grew up on a farm and, from an early age, was a serious student of the piano—elements of her background that contributed to the vivid imagery and musical patterns in her poetry. She attended Converse College and the University of Iowa. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. Kyrie was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Voigt has taught at Goddard College and M.I.T., and now teaches for the Warren Wilson College low-residency M.F.A. Program for Writers. She lives in Vermont, where she is currently the state poet. Her reputation as a generous, rigorous mentor is matched by her reputation as one of our most reliably memorable poets. You were trained as a pianist. You write poetry about music; you write about poems in The Flexible Lyric by paying attention to their musical structures, and you’ve often used musical analogies in making your own poems. Could you talk about how you became a poet when, for a while, you were quite serious about becoming a musician? I started playing the piano because my older sister did. For a long time I wanted to be my sister, and the form that took was to want to do whatever she did. She started piano lessons when I was four, so I started piano lessons. She didn’t ultimately stick with them, but I did. And I did so because essentially I’m a formalist; that’s part of my makeup. I don’t have much tolerance for disorder, and of course the world is full of disorder. But the impulse for order can’t really take its form in language until you have language. So I was very lucky to have music. Another thing music provided me was solitude. I grew up on a farm in southern Virginia with lots of relatives around from my father’s family and my mother’s family. It was exceedingly claustrophobic. Both of my parents loved music and had come from musical families. As long as they could hear the music coming from the piano, I was excused from other things. It was really about the only time I could be alone. Playing piano was an occasion for solitude that was socially sanctioned, which I think is really important in terms of my notion of music, or my relationship to it. Now that I’ve written poetry for this long, I can look back and see poem after poem that takes up the friction between that solitary individual and whatever that social unit is, be it small or large.
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Negotiating the right relationship between self and world? Exactly. When I decided I needed to escape from this little town, I thought music was going to take me out. My lifetime goal was to be a high school band director; I went to school to become one. Most conservatories trained for performance, and I discovered I didn’t like to perform on stage. I loved playing for other people; in college, I played for the chorus and for voice and cello lessons, and I played for the swim team. But I didn’t have the technique or the temperament to be a concert pianist. In the meantime, what I was good at—as often happens—I didn’t value to the extent I might have. I could sight-read very well, and play by ear—only after thirty years of making poems do I know that my love of music was love of pattern, of harmony and theory. And those were the courses they kept ‘‘placing’’ me out of. Meanwhile I had various terrible jobs playing the piano, including one at a resort, playing junk all night. And then I saw that I was not suited to be a high school band director, because I didn’t have enough patience. In the middle of this, a friend who loved poetry read me some poems, and I was stunned. In my high school, in the fifties, we read ‘‘The highway man came riding, riding, riding, up to the old inn door.’’ That was poetry. Do you remember the poems your friend read to you? e. e. cummings and Rilke—‘‘The Panther.’’ Having taken mainly music courses, I had a kind of intellectual hunger by that time. So I signed up for the sophomore survey in English literature where I discovered Beowulf; and this was it. I fell in love. I didn’t have it in mind to write poems; I just wanted to read them. I took more and more English literature and less and less music. And along the way I started writing poems as an act of homage. They hardly made any sense, I can tell you. Earlier you called yourself a ‘‘formalist.’’ Could you explain what you mean by that term? When you say, ‘‘I’m a formalist’’ you don’t mean simply ‘‘received’’ forms. If you see, out of the corner of your inner eye, this shapely, delicate piece of pottery you want to create, and then you go to the store to get whatever materials you need, and you have an excess of them, but put your first allegiance to that palpable shape you have perceived—even if it means that you will use hardly any of these
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materials—if that’s your first allegiance, then I think you are a formalist. The alternative is to have the materials there, and to see what can be made of them, with first allegiance to those materials: you are willing to compromise on what I think of as the balanced relationship of all the parts. That balance is what ‘‘form’’ means to me. In The Flexible Lyric you write: ‘‘poetry’s first allegiance is to music.’’ And ‘‘Song and Story,’’ the last poem in Two Trees, suggests a tension that figures persistently in your work: the lyric versus the narrative impulse. Can you talk about those two modes—are they in conflict or do they collaborate? That’s the crucial question I’ve spent roughly ten years thinking about and trying to figure out. The problem for the poet, I think, is to determine what structure is available to accommodate the materials the poem is going to need. I came to see a huge difference between a narrative structure and a lyric structure. The lyric, of course, has always included various parts of what we think of as story. They’re sort of ‘‘back story.’’ They lie behind every lyric: that sense of an utterance, a character, a voice in a particular circumstance. But with the lyric structure, the arrangement of the materials is very different. So how you deploy the elements governs whether it’s a narrative or a lyric? Yes, and the definition I finally came up with—which I use in the essays and have used in teaching—has to do with the order in which the materials are released to the reader. One thing you can do when you finish a book is to set yourself some new challenge. When I started writing The Lotus Flowers I wanted to learn how to write a narrative poem, even if only to understand how a narrative differs from a lyric. I don’t know that I succeeded in The Lotus Flowers. Narrative isn’t the structure I see when I look at the world. What drives me most in the world are those things that join us, things we all have in common, which are not many. But they have to do with the emotional life. That does not fuel a narrative. What fuels a narrative are all the ways in which we are different. But despite this, narrative could be thought of as the more sociable form. There are ways in which it’s more accessible because it varies the intensity for the reader or the listener. ‘‘Tell me a story,’’ we say, and then listen to the story because
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the storyteller has opportunities to vary again and again the story’s rate of intensity. A lyric is entirely about intensity. It’s about all of it spiraling in, and holding that intensity, and not relenting. And I think as the general population reads less and less poetry, that kind of attention is harder and harder to provide. When I finished the poems in The Lotus Flowers, I came to suspect the orderly structure of narrative—beginning, middle, and end. For about two years I wrote nothing but fragments. I came to think of them as ‘‘middles,’’ as having anti-narrative impulses behind them. I also came to think of them as what a painter might produce, what Monet did when he went out to paint the same haystack every day in different light. For me, that meant allowing myself to take on huge subjects—truth, or beauty, or innocence—and go to that subject every day and have the variant be tone. What would be light for a painter would be tone for a poet. Source: Steven Cramer, ‘‘Song and Story,’’ in Atlantic, November 24, 1999.
SOURCES Campion, Peter, Review of The Lotus Flowers, in Poetry, Vol. 189, No. 4, January 2007, p. 317. Cramer, Steven, ‘‘Song and Story: An Interview with Ellen Bryant Voigt,’’ in Atlantic, November 24, 1999. Freedman, Estelle, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, Ballantine, 2002. Hirsch, Edward, ‘‘Heroes and Villanelles,’’ in New York Times Book Review, August 23, 1987. Hoagland, Tony, ‘‘About Ellen Bryant Voigt: A Profile,’’ in Ploughshares, Winter 1996–1997. Kennelly, Laura B., ‘‘Ellen Bryant Voigt,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 120, American Poets Since World War II, 3rd ser., Gale Research, 1992, pp. 307–11. Scheub, Harold, The Poem in the Story: Music, Poetry, and Narrative, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. ‘‘Women’s Studies Timeline,’’ in San Diego State University Department of Education, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ dept/wsweb/timeline.htm (accessed August 21, 2009). Voigt, Ellen Bryant, ‘‘The Lotus Flowers,’’ in The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, 2nd ed., edited by Leon Stokesbury, University of Arkansas Press, 1999, pp. 325–26.
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Frost, Elisabeth A., and Cynthia Hogue, eds., Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews, University of Iowa Press, 2006. This anthology presents readers with insight into the poetry of Voigt’s peers and also includes fourteen lengthy interviews with contemporary female poets.
Voigt, Ellen Bryant, The Flexible Lyric, University of Georgia Press, 1999. While Voigt’s ‘‘The Lotus Flowers’’ is a narrative poem, most of her poetry is written in the lyric form. These nine essays, written by the poet toward the latter part of her career, all explore the art of lyric poetry. Voigt also includes her impressions of numerous lyric poets and their work.
Shakespeare, William, The Narrative Poems, edited by Jonathan V. Crewe, Penguin Classics, 1999. This anthology of Shakespeare’s classic narrative poems includes ‘‘A Lover’s Complaint,’’ ‘‘The Passionate Pilgrim,’’ ‘‘The Phoenix and the Turtle,’’ and ‘‘Venus And Adonis.’’
Yapp, Nick, 1980s: Decades of the 20th Century, Ullmann, 2008. This pictorial history is produced by Getty Images and provides an artistic and insightful exploration into the 1980s.
FURTHER READING
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Mushrooms SYLVIA PLATH 1960
‘‘Mushrooms’’ is a poem by American poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was published in England in 1960 in Plath’s first collection of verse The Colossus. An American edition, The Colossus and Other Poems followed in 1962. ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is also available in The Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes in 1981. The poem has as its main theme the unexpected power of small and seemingly insignificant things, as symbolized by the growth of mushrooms. While showing an intense sympathy toward nature and its processes, ‘‘Mushrooms’’ can also be interpreted as having a feminist message. This aspect of the poem fits Plath’s reputation as an early voice in the emerging feminist movement of the 1960s. Much of Plath’s work has an intensely autobiographical aspect. As her journal writings show, she was preoccupied with the question of how she, as a woman, could forge an identity and define herself in relation to society. This preoccupation became a central theme in her only novel, The Bell Jar (1963), and in much of her poetry. ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is a seminal work in Plath’s lifelong exploration of an issue that is still much discussed today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of German immigrant
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from New York City, she was given electroshock therapy. On August 24, 1953 she made her first suicide attempt, swallowing sleeping pills. She was hospitalized and physically recovered. After returning to college, she graduated with honors in 1955. Plath won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In February, 1956, she met and fell passionately in love with English poet Ted Hughes. They married on June 16, 1956. Their relationship was tumultuous and Plath often suspected that Hughes was having affairs. After Plath gained her master’s degree from Cambridge, the couple went to live in the United States, where Plath taught literature at Smith College. In 1958 they moved to Boston and tried to live off their income from writing. Plath published poems in national magazines but was depressed about a lack of progress in her writing career and publishers’ rejections of her first volume of poetry, The Colossus.
Sylvia Plath (The Library of Congress)
Otto Emil Plath, a professor of biology, and Aurelia Schober Plath, a teacher. Plath’s father died of diabetes when she was eight years old. Many of her poems focus on her relationship with her father, including ‘‘The Colossus,’’ the title poem of the collection in which ‘‘Mushrooms’’ appears. Plath excelled in her high school studies and published stories and poems in national magazines. She won a scholarship to Smith College and studied there from 1950 to 1955. In 1952 she won a fiction contest run by Mademoiselle magazine, and she won a guest editorship to work at the magazine the following year. During this time she began suffering from the depression that would ultimately lead to her death. In a journal entry of June 20, 1958 (quoted by Timothy Materer in Dictionary of Literary Biography,), she wrote, ‘‘it is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative—which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.’’ She later based her novel, The Bell Jar (1963), on her experiences during this period. On returning home
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In 1959 Plath and Hughes moved to England, where Plath had greater success. The Colossus was published in 1960 and in the same year, the couple had a daughter, Frieda. Plath later won a Saxton fellowship that enabled her to work on her novel, The Bell Jar, and she also wrote large numbers of poems. In February 1962, the couple had a son, Nicholas. That summer, the marriage broke up, and Hughes, who was having an affair, moved to London, leaving Plath to raise their two children. The Bell Jar, which tells the story of a young woman’s search for identity, her descent into depression, and her subsequent suicide attempt, was published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath struggled with poor health, depression, and the responsibilities of lone parenthood. On February 11, 1963, Plath sealed up the doors of her children’s rooms with damp towels, turned the kitchen gas oven on, thrust her head inside, and ended her life. After her death, Plath became an iconic figure for some feminists. They blamed Hughes’s treatment of Plath for her suicide. As executor of her estate, Hughes controlled the editing and publication of her work, and he has been criticized for withholding or destroying material that was thought to have reflected badly on him. Since her death, Plath has become recognized as a major poet of the Confessional School (a school of poetry that deals frankly with the speaker’s negative experiences, such as illness, addiction, and relationship problems) and a
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chronicler of women’s search for self-identity and of fascination with death. She was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982 for her volume, Collected Poems (Harper, 1981), edited by Hughes, which contains ‘‘Mushrooms.’’
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Sylvia Plath Reads (Caedmon, 2000) is an audiocassette of Plath reading her poetry, including ‘‘Mushrooms.’’
Voices & Visions: Sylvia Plath (Winstar, 2000) is a videotape of Plath reading her poetry and speaking in interviews. Commentaries by friends, family, and critics are included. Sylvia (Universal, 2003) is a biographical film of Plath’s tumultuous relationship with Ted Hughes, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Plath and Daniel Craig as Hughes, and directed by Christine Jeffs.
POEM SUMMARY Stanza 1 On the most literal level, ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is a description of the natural process of the growth of mushrooms. The poem opens with a description of how mushrooms appear seemingly out of nothing, quietly, unexpectedly, and without fuss. They appear overnight. Their white color is noted.
Stanza 2 Using imagery of body parts that normally applies to human beings, the poet describes the mushrooms as pushing through loam, a type of rich, fertile soil considered ideal for growing plants. Having taken possession of one element, the earth, they now emerge into, and take possession of, the air. The stanza makes clear for the first time that the voice of the poem is the first person plural. This means that the poet is speaking as if she is one of the mushrooms.
Stanza 3 The mushrooms grow in secret, with no one noticing their presence. The idea is introduced that some people may want to prevent the mushrooms from growing and treacherously reveal their existence. But this does not happen, and the mushrooms are allowed to progress unimpeded. The grains that make up the soil are portrayed as making space for the mushrooms.
hammers or rams with which they push their way through obstacles. This image likens them to soldiers laying siege to a fort. The fact that they lack ears and eyes is both a literal and accurate description of mushrooms and (since the personification of the mushrooms has already given them a human aspect) a sinister image, as the idea of a person without ears and eyes would frighten many people. It also, paradoxically, robs the mushrooms of humanity and individuality, as ears and eyes are part of the sensory equipment of human beings.
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The poet returns to the idea introduced in stanza 1 of the quietness of the mushrooms’ progress. Not only are the mushrooms, as mentioned in stanza 5, lacking ears and eyes, but they also lack a voice. Again, this is both literally accurate, as mushrooms do not make sounds, and an image that dehumanizes and de-individualizes the mushrooms. It is often said of dispossessed and downtrodden people that they lack a voice, and the poet’s portrayal of the mushrooms as voiceless identifies them with these oppressed groups.
The mushrooms force their way through or past even the heavy weight of paving stones. They are imagined, metaphorically speaking, as having
In another personifying image using a human body part, the mushrooms are shown pushing their way through holes in an attempt
Stanza 4 As in stanza 2, the mushrooms are personified, with the suggestion that they have hands that they use to fight their way out of the earth. There is some effort involved, as the mushrooms have to lift the weight of the soil and other materials that lie on the earth. The soil is described as being covered with pine needles and leaves.
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to grow to their full stature. They are successful, as the cracks are forced apart by their efforts.
Stanza 7 In a run-on line (a line that runs from the last line of the previous stanza to the first line of the new stanza), the mushrooms’ sparse diet is emphasized. Crumbs and water is the sparsest penitential diet imaginable, but the poet makes it seem even more so by intensifying the idea of crumbs with the insubstantial image of shadows. The blandness of the mushrooms’ manner is another factor that emphasizes their ability to fade into the background and not be noticed.
Stanza 8 In another run-on line that crosses stanzas, the poet states that the mushrooms do not ask for much. They are modest and undemanding. Nevertheless, they are successful at multiplying and there are now very many of them. This point is emphasized by the poet’s repetition of the second and third lines of the stanza. Repetition used as a literary device is called anaphora. The fact that these two lines are also exclamations has the effect of expressing the poet’s wonderment at the large number of mushrooms.
effacing appearance. The final line of the stanza makes clear that the mushrooms have a power that enables them to overcome apparent annihilation: they breed, and rapidly, too.
Stanza 11 The poet ends by invoking the Biblical dictum from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth’’ (Matthew 5:5). While Christian theology often places this event at some point in the distant future, after the Day of Judgment, or in the afterlife, the poet has a shorter timescale in mind: the very next morning. There is a paradox in the fact that something as small and apparently insignificant as the mushrooms can inherit the vast earth. The final line can be taken as a promise or a threat. Like the salesman who sticks his foot in the door to prevent a houseowner shutting him out, so the mushrooms have gained a foothold on world domination.
THEMES Feminism
The mushrooms are likened in metaphors to shelves and tables. These are items to which most people give little thought, but people find them useful because they place other items of greater importance on top of them. If the shelves and tables were suddenly removed, the objects they support would crash to the ground. The mushrooms accept this state of things because of their essential humility. The poet is conveying the idea that the mushrooms may be overlooked, but that other things or beings that are given greater status are dependent on them. The final line of this stanza details the way in which other beings depend on mushrooms: the mushrooms are edible and are eaten. This makes the individual mushrooms disappear, as they are consumed.
The main theme of ‘‘Mushrooms’’ can be seen as the feminist struggle and growth to greater selfawareness. This is treated through the symbolism of the mushrooms, which can be assumed to stand for women. This interpretation, it might be argued, is the one that is most consistent within the context of the poem. However, symbols frequently have many aspects of meaning and different people interpret the symbol of Plath’s mushrooms in different ways. Some essayists have identified the mushrooms with the victims of the Holocaust, jostling for space in cramped conditions; those who suffer mental illness; and even the atomic bomb. The feminist interpretation does not necessarily negate these other interpretations, and the contrary is also true: the other interpretations do not necessarily negate the feminist interpretation.
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Life Cycles
The fact mentioned in the previous stanza that the mushrooms are eaten suggests that they disappear, but this stanza makes clear that this is not the end of mushrooms as a collective group. They continue to grow, forcing their way through the earth in their journey of self-realization. They do this in spite of their undoubtedly humble and self-
‘‘Mushrooms’’ can be interpreted as a birth myth (a story about the miraculous birth of a hero), or a depiction of death and rebirth. The mushrooms spring into being, apparently out of nothing. This nothingness is the annihilation of being and the death of the spirit, signified externally by their lack of color, voice, eyes, and ears. Inwardly,
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
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Research the topic of women’s rights before and after World War II in the United States and England. Trace the development and fate of various laws that related to equal rights for women. Make a list of the things that a woman could and could not do in 1930, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990, noting if her marital status made any difference. Create a PowerPoint presentation with your findings. Write an essay that compares and contrasts Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, with her poem ‘‘Mushrooms,’’ in terms of themes and authorial voice. What relevance, if any, does Plath’s ‘‘Mushrooms’’ have to women in today’s society? Make a class presentation on your findings in any of the following formats: an oral presentation, a PowerPoint, or a dramatic performance. The mushrooms of Plath’s poem ‘‘Mushrooms’’ are described as being voiceless. Analyze what it means to lack a voice, either as an individual or a group. Consider such elements as cultural and religious norms; ways of disseminating information, such as the media; poverty; and education. What measures can voiceless people take to acquire a voice in society? What are society’s duties and responsibilities in ensuring that people have a voice? Give a class presentation on your findings. Read Kashmira Sheth’s young-adult novel, Keeping Corner (Hyperion, 2007), the story of Leela, a twelve-year-old Indian girl whose husband dies and who encounters Mahatma Gandhi’s movement to free India from British rule. Trace Leela’s journey of selfdiscovery and compare and contrast it with the growth process of women as presented in Plath’s poem ‘‘Mushrooms.’’ Write an essay on your findings.
their blandness, meekness, and discretion contribute to their lack of self-expression and individuality. In terms of the feminist interpretation, these qualities can be seen as having been imposed on women by the expectations of men and society. The poem shows the mushrooms growing and forcing their way into being.
Oppression The poem’s symbolism can also be widened beyond the concept of the feminist uprising to suggest the struggle toward empowerment of all downtrodden and dispossessed people, whatever their gender. There is nothing in the poem that limits its meaning to the female sex. This broader interpretation universalizes the message of the poem and makes a possible thematic link to the civil rights movement, which paralleled the feminist movement after World War II. In this context, the poem is a threat to those in power that the uprising of any previously powerless group of people will come suddenly and without warning.
Self-Examination ‘‘Mushrooms’’ can be interpreted as detailing women’s emergence from invisibility as creatures in their own right. This is not shown as a completed and perfected process but as a work in progress, fraught with challenge and difficulty. Thus the mushrooms are growing but not fully formed. Lacking eyes, ears, and a voice, they resemble embryonic human beings. If it is assumed that the mushrooms represent all dispossessed peoples, then the poem is about the general human struggle for self-identity and self-fulfillment. Whichever of these interpretations is favored, there is a tension between the desire for growth and individuation and the factors that oppose and oppress these processes. Chief among the opposing factors is the weight of the status quo (a Latin phrase meaning the way things are). The poet makes clear, through references to heaving great weight and vulnerability to discovery and betrayal, that the growth process is onerous and fraught with difficulty. Nevertheless, it ends in triumph, when these small and seemingly insignificant fungi come into possession of the earth. However, in keeping with Plath’s discomfiting voice, this triumph is not expressed in terms of a joyful event. The mushrooms that inherit the earth seem as invasive as salespersons who force a way into someone’s home by sticking their foot in the door. The poet does not make clear
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Mushrooms (Image copyright Barri, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
what happens next, but the symbolism and ominous language suggest that the mushrooms will meet with a hostile confrontation rather than a welcome. The poet suggests that women’s selfrealization will not be celebrated by all, but instead could be seen as a threat and an alien invasion.
STYLE Confessional Poetry In 1958 Plath attended Robert Lowell’s poetry seminar in Boston, where she met fellow poet Anne Sexton and became familiar with her work. Plath later identified Lowell and Sexton as poets whose work she admired for what became known as the confessional mode of poetry that they pioneered. The three poets are frequently linked by critics. Confessional poetry engages in the unabashed exploration of the less salubrious aspects of the poet’s life, such as marital difficulties, mental illness, fascination with death, and addiction. It has
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to do with self-disclosure, without the usual societal filters of discretion or modesty. While several of Plath’s poems fit this mold, the self-disclosure of ‘‘Mushrooms’’ takes a somewhat different form. This is best expressed by Ted Hughes (quoted by Kathleen Margaret Lant in her essay, ‘‘The Big Strip Tease: Female Bodies and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath’’), who noted that Plath shared with Lowell and Sexton not only a similar geographical homeland but also ‘‘the central experience of a shattering of the self, and the labour of fitting it together again or finding a new one.’’ ‘‘Mushrooms’’ can be interpreted as detailing the dehumanization and oppression of the female individual and her attempt to build another identity.
Symbolism A symbol in literature is a thing that stands for or suggests another thing. Often, a visible and concrete thing will be used to suggest something invisible or abstract. Here, Plath uses a visible thing, the growth of mushrooms, to suggest an abstract thing, the feminist uprising and the empowerment of women. (Plath was preoccupied
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with the journey toward self-identity and selffulfillment at a time when women did not have rights equal to men. This leads many readers to conclude that the poem is symbolic of the feminist struggle.) More generally, the mushrooms can be said to symbolize any dispossessed group that is growing into its power.
Personification The symbolism of ‘‘Mushrooms’’ relies upon personification, a literary device in which inanimate or non-human entities (in this case, mushrooms) are given human qualities. The mushrooms are given human-type body parts and behavior, but this stops short of completeness: they are human yet lack ears, eyes, and a voice. This creates a sinister effect and also emphasizes the fact that they are denied full power and complete humanity. This plays into the feminist theme of the poem. While women are portrayed as heavily relied upon for support in the manner of tables or shelves, they are not listened to or credited with full sensory perception. In addition, women who lack eyes and ears might be expected to be blind and deaf to injustices done to them. There is an implicit question of what would happen to an eyeless, earless, and voiceless woman if she suddenly came into possession of these things. She would be able to see and hear injustice and she would be able to speak about it.
The pairing of similar sounds frequently recurs in the poem. In the penultimate (or second to last) stanza the first and third lines use assonance to link words of similar meaning in pairs, reinforcing their significance. The repetition of similar sounds reflects the meaning of the unstoppable multiplication and growth of the mushrooms. The poem uses eye rhymes, a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and therefore do not produce an auditory rhyme, to add to the rhythm. The last two lines of the first stanza, for example, each end in a word ending in -etly, though the vowel sound of the e in each of these words is pronounced differently. The first line, too, ends in the same -y sound (assonance). The repetition of these visuals and sounds contributes to the sense of insistent effort and persistence on the part of the indomitable mushrooms. There are also half rhymes in the poem. A half rhyme is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved. The poet sometimes ties together two stanzas with such half rhymes, as with stanzas 4 and 5. Here, the last line of stanza 4 ends in -ing, as does the first line of stanza 5. In this case, the half rhyme, as well as creating auditory rhythm, ties together two words of similar meaning. Both words refer to the material of which the ground is made and through which the mushrooms must push in order to grow.
Verse Form ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is written in a strict and regular verse form which creates an austere impression. There are eleven stanzas of three lines each. Each line has five syllables. The poet also uses alliteration (repetition of consonants), consonance (repetition of the same consonant two or more times in quick succession), and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) to enrich the rhythm and meaning. For example, the first line of stanza 2 uses two long o sounds (assonance) to reflect the gradual but forceful effort that the mushrooms must expend in their growth. An example of consonance occurs in the first line of stanza 4, which has four s’s. This has the effect of linking the first two words of the line through their s sounds with the word insist, which has two such sounds. Thus, the entire line adds to the strength of the idea of the insistence of the mushrooms’ growth.
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HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Women’s Rights Movement Plath wrote ‘‘Mushrooms’’ in post-World War II England. During the war, both in England and the United States, many men of working age went away to fight in the war and women were left to run businesses and work in industry. Furthermore, many men died in combat, so women were needed in greater numbers in the workforce after World War II than they had been before it. These historical events were a major spur for the growth of the feminist movement during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It was argued that as women were doing the same work as men, they should be paid the same and enjoy equal rights. During the 1960s in the United States, several federal laws were passed that were designed to improve the economic status of women. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 mandated equal wages for men and women doing equal work. The
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1960s: The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would have outlawed legal discrimination based on sex, is introduced into every Congressional session, as it has been since 1923. However, state ratification fails and the Amendment is never passed. Today: Equality between the sexes is sought in the workplace via the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment, which outlaws discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and gender. While men still earn more than women, this may be due in part to different career choices by women, such as taking time off to have children, or not being willing to travel or relocate. 1960s: In Great Britain, only in 1961 are women teachers granted equal pay with men. The 1960s are marked by a series of strikes by women demanding equal pay with men, ending in the Equal Pay Act of 1970. Today: The debate continues over equal pay, with some observers arguing that the real cause of women’s lower and unequal pay is
Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination against women by any company with over twenty-five employees. In 1967 a Presidential Executive Order was issued prohibiting bias against women by federal government employers. However, discrimination against women in daily life remained. Married women often could not obtain credit cards in their own name. Single or divorced women often could not obtain credit to purchase a house or a car: stories were rife about women having to take along male friends for the purpose of signing the credit agreement, even when they were not the real purchasers. Even in the area of crime, women were discriminated against. A woman who shot and killed her husband could be accused of homicide, but a man who shot his wife could be accused of a lesser crime of passion. In Pennsylvania, only in 1968 did the courts void a state law that ruled
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job segregation (women tend to favor lower paid careers such as teaching and nursing, and are more likely to work part-time) and the consequent undervaluing of so-called women’s skills.
1960s: In the United States, as a result of the activities of the civil rights movement, most of the laws that mandated racial segregation are removed by 1968. Today: The remaining barriers to racial integration are mostly social, cultural, and economic. Housing and religion are highly racially segregated.
1960s: Anne Sexton’s poetry, published in volumes such as To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960) and All My Pretty Ones (1962), helps pioneer the female confessional voice. Today: Poets such as Adrienne Rich continue to develop confessional poetry in a way that describes the female experience of life and society.
that any woman convicted of a felony should be sentenced to the maximum punishment prescribed by law. In most states, abortion was only deemed legal if the mother’s life was proven to be physically endangered by continuing with the pregnancy. This state of affairs was overturned in 1973 by a landmark case in the Supreme Court, Roe vs. Wade, which ruled that a mother may abort her pregnancy for any reason, up until the point at which the fetus becomes viable.
The Civil Rights Movement Running parallel with the women’s rights movement in the United States was the civil rights movement (approximately 1955–68). The civil rights movement attempted to abolish public and private acts of discrimination on the basis of race, particularly with regard to African Americans.
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Equal pay sign (Homer Sykes / Getty Images)
The period between 1955 and 1968 was marked by outbreaks of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience aimed at drawing attention to the lack of equity faced by African Americans. One pivotal episode in the civil rights struggle took place on December 1, 1955, when an African American woman and civil rights activist, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a bus to make room for a white passenger. Her act and the subsequent Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott led to the abolition of segregation on public buses in 1956. In 1960, a student sit-in was held at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest Woolworth’s policy of excluding African Americans. Four African American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter at Woolworth’s, leaving space for white sympathizers to sit among them. The civil rights movement culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which together made discrimination illegal and protected the voting rights of African Americans.
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The Treatment of Depression Electroconvulsive therapy or electroshock treatment was a popular treatment for severe depression in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Plath was given electroconvulsive therapy for depression, but it only seemed to increase her anxiety. Electroconvulsive therapy is still used today as a treatment for depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder (moods of depression and abnormally elevated mood, or mania). It has gained a controversial reputation due to suggestions that it can cause brain damage. One of its side-effects is memory loss. The two other main treatments for depression are medication, and psychotherapy, which Plath was treated with. One of the most popular psychotherapies is cognitive behavioral therapy, which aims to change negative thought patterns and behaviors. A commonly prescribed drug treatment for depression is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), though controversy has arisen over side-effects said to include suicidal and homicidal ideation (a desire to kill oneself or other people).
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CRITICAL OVERVIEW At the time of her death, Plath was known only to a small circle of other poets. Her fame, and income from her poetry, came later. The collection in which ‘‘Mushrooms’’ was first published, The Colossus, was initially rejected by publishers in the United States, but was published in England in 1960. Because of Plath’s relatively modest profile, John Wain was one of the few critics who reviewed the collection. Writing in the Spectator in 1961 (quoted in Modern American Literature), Wain praises Plath’s ‘‘care for the springy rhythm, the arresting image and—most of all, perhaps— the unusual word.’’ Wain adds that Plath writes ‘‘clever, vivacious poetry, which will be enjoyed most by intelligent people capable of having fun with poetry and not just being holy about it.’’ While Wain notes that Plath had already found ‘‘an individual manner,’’ he adds that some of the poems were too derivative of the work of other poets. Roy Fuller, writing in London magazine (quoted by Timothy Materer in the Dictionary of Literary Biography,), also finds the work ‘‘derivative.’’ Mary Lynn Broe, in her essay, ‘‘Protean Poetic: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath,’’ identifies ‘‘Mushrooms’’ as one of several poems of Plath’s that ‘‘reinforce the ominous power of diminished things . . . quiet and discreet, those self-effacing ‘Mushrooms’ suddenly become threatening despite the cautious syllabics of the poem.’’ Broe laments the ‘‘revisionist’’ views of the collection that appeared after Plath’s suicide, in which critics began to mine The Colossus for ‘‘the macabre and grisly elements’’ that might have foreshadowed Plath’s suicide: ‘‘Now described as a ‘breviary of estrangement,’ The Colossus became a casebook for those seeking evidence of suicidal despair.’’ Broe writes that after the English poet, writer, and critic A. Alvarez suggested that ‘‘the disciplined art of The Colossus functioned as a fence to keep psychological disturbance at bay, critics and reviewers jumped on the ‘suicide bandwagon’ in their eagerness to mythologize Plath.’’ Since these reviewers equated pathology with poetic power, Broe writes, ‘‘Any diminished quality of pain or estrangement in the poems hinted that the poet had not yet come to grips with her subject as an artist.’’
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A. Alvarez, in his book, The Savage God (quoted in Modern American Literature), makes a comment about Plath’s work that illuminates the style and subject matter of ‘‘Mushrooms.’’ Alvarez believes that Plath thought of herself as a poetic realist, for whom the ‘‘extraordinary inner wealth of imagery and associations was almost beside the point.’’ Alvarez explains: Because she felt she was simply describing the facts as they had happened, she was able to tap in the coolest possible way all her large reserves of skill: those subtle rhymes and half-rhymes, the flexible, echoing rhythms and offhand colloquialism by which she preserved, even in her most anguishing probing, complete artistic control. Her internal horrors were as factual and precisely sensed as the barely controllable stallion on which she was learning to ride or the car she had tried to smash up.
For Joyce Carol Oates in her 1973 essay, ‘‘The Death Throes of Romanticism: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath’’ (quoted in Modern American Literature), Plath’s poetry makes personal and accessible the tragedy and spiritual decay of the modern world. In an appraisal of a number of Plath’s collections, including The Colossus, Oates calls Plath ‘‘a tragic figure involved in a tragic action,’’ adding, ‘‘her tragedy is offered to us as a near-perfect work of art’’ in these works.
CRITICISM Claire Robinson Robinson has an M.A. in English. She is a former teacher of English literature and creative writing and a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she explores how Sylvia Plath’s ‘‘Mushrooms’’ functions as a birth myth for the woman of the modern era. A birth myth or birth tale is a story about the often miraculous birth and infancy of a hero or, in some cases, an entire race of people or a nation. In the case of a hero, the baby is deprived of his true parents and heritage and is cast by fate into a different environment, many times a lowly one, in which he must struggle to survive. The hero is frequently of royal or aristocratic birth but is raised by humble people. This can be seen as giving him a more complete view of the world than he would have had if he had never left his privileged birthright, as well as exposing him to unusual trials that help form his character and prove his worth.
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
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Plath’s The Bell Jar (first published in 1963, republished by Harper, 2000), is a heavily autobiographical novel that tells the story of a young woman’s mental breakdown and suicide attempt during an internship at a New Yorkbased magazine. It gives an insight into the awareness that gave birth to ‘‘Mushrooms.’’ Virginia Woolf’s nonfiction work A Room of One’s Own (first published 1929), republished with another of Woolf’s works, Three Guineas, as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008), is closely related thematically to Plath’s ‘‘Mushrooms.’’ It is a critique of the historical exclusion of women from education and economic independence. In Three Guineas (first published 1938), Woolf argues that this historical exclusion could enable women to stand apart from and oppose the drive towards fascism and war. Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women, edited by Elaine Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California (Beacon Press, 1989) is a collection of fiction, poetry, and essays by Asian American women. Topics covered include women’s search for an identity, feminism, immigration, and prejudice against women and Asians. Pushing the Limits: American Women 1940– 1961 by Elaine Tyler May (Oxford University Press, 1998) is Volume 9 of the ‘‘Young Oxford History of Women in the United States’’ series. The book, which is aimed at young adults, considers the stories of prominent women from many different races and cultures in tracing the rise of feminism from the Great Depression to the early 1960s. In 1955 the civil rights movement changed forever when an African American woman,
Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. Her autobiography, aimed at older children and young adults and published as Rosa Parks: My Story, by Rosa Parks and Jim Haskins (Puffin, 1999), tells the inspiring story of Parks’s life and her civil rights activism.
Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique (first published in 1963, republished by W.W. Norton, 2001), is a seminal work of feminist thinking that depicts femininity as a social and cultural construct. It argues that women, who have no identity except as someone’s wife and mother and are denied all creative expression except for giving birth, are manipulated into becoming mere consumers who try to fill the emotional void in their lives by shopping.
Silences, a nonfiction work by the Jewish American author Tillie Olsen (first published in 1978 and available in an edition published by the Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003), analyzes why women are under-represented in literature. Olsen argues that women, especially those of lower socioeconomic classes, are silenced by societal expectations as well as by censorship and self-censorship.
Plath’s poem ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ (published in The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes, Harper, reprint, 1981) is a verse monolog and a life-death-rebirth myth. Voiced by a woman who has survived death multiple times, the poem is inspired by the Biblical figure of Lazarus, a man who was raised from the dead by Jesus Christ. While it is often read as a description of Plath’s suicide attempts, it has deeper mythic resonances and deals with themes such as fascination with death, perceptions of the female body, and female power.
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FOR PLATH, WOMANHOOD ITSELF—NOT SIMPLY THE WAY THAT WOMEN WERE TREATED BY SOCIETY—WAS A BURDEN AND A PRISON: THE DISEASE WAS WITHIN AS WELL AS WITHOUT.’’
In time, the hero comes of age and reclaims his true heritage and high position in society. The Biblical stories of Jesus Christ and of Moses are examples of such birth tales, as is the story of the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and of Krishna, the god-child of Hinduism. In the case of Jesus Christ, the Bible tells that he was miraculously born of a virgin, though his true father was God. He was born in the humble surroundings of a stable at an inn, which belied his divine origins. Brought up as the ordinary son of a carpenter, he finally became a teacher and leader of men and was acclaimed by his followers as a spiritual savior and the Son of God. A life-death-rebirth myth or tale is a variation on the birth myth that tells the story of a hero or deity’s life, death, and subsequent resurrection. Examples include, once again, Jesus Christ, who, the Bible says, was crucified but rose again from the dead. Another example, from Greek mythology, is Persephone, the daughter of Zeus, king of the gods, and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Persephone was abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, who kept her prisoner there. Demeter was so angry that while her daughter was imprisoned in the underworld, the earth ceased to be fertile and winter reigned. Hades was brought to agree to release Persephone back to the earth’s surface for a part of the year. When Persephone returned to the earth’s surface, fertility returned and plants grew. Thus she was seen as the goddess of fertility and spring. Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘‘Mushrooms’’ is a birth and rebirth myth for the modern age. It is both a personal birth and rebirth myth for the poem’s female speaker and, as it taps into widespread female neuroses and concerns, a generic birth and rebirth myth for everywoman.
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What is the death that makes rebirth necessary for the modern woman? Joyce Carol Oates writes in her essay, ‘‘The Death Throes of Romanticism: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath,’’ that Plath’s poetry shows ‘‘the pathological aspects of our era that make a death of the spirit inevitable.’’ For Plath, womanhood itself—not simply the way that women were treated by society—was a burden and a prison: the disease was within as well as without. According to Kathleen Margaret Lant, Plath wrote in her journals, ‘‘Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed . . . to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity.’’ Lant adds that Plath so completely identified power and hope with masculinity that she told a college friend that her ideal family would consist only of herself, her husband, and their magnificently male children. Lant writes that according to Plath’s biographer, Nancy Hunter Steiner, ‘‘She had decided that her husband would be a very tall man and she spoke, half-jokingly, of producing a race of superchildren, as superlatively large as they were intelligent. The children, she predicted, would all be boys.’’ ‘‘Mushrooms’’ contains implicitly this death of the female spirit, while describing the rebirth explicitly. The condition of womanhood is portrayed symbolically by the mushrooms. Their birth is shown as sudden and unexpected. Anyone who has observed mushrooms growing knows that they can miraculously appear overnight, seemingly out of nothing. The poet is suggesting in this comparison that women’s annihilation has been total and that they have become invisible. Their re-emergence to a position of power will happen without warning, like an ambush. However, even in the rebirth celebrated in the poem, they are still without ears, eyes, and voices, images that connote a being who, like the three wise monkeys of legend, sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil. These images also bring to mind the cliche´d nineteenth-century view of women and children that was preserved, to some extent, until the last decades of the twentieth century: that they should be seen (in a purely decorative role) and not heard. Even the idea that women are visible is qualified, as the mushrooms are white, a non-color that will not, as the old saying has it, frighten the horses. These ideas are reinforced by the description of the mushrooms’ growth as quiet, discreet, and
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meek. These are all qualities that have been traditionally required of well-brought up women who know and accept an inferior position in society. The sparse diet of the mushrooms, water and crumbs of shadows, may connote a passage in a seminal work of feminism, Virginia Woolf’s nonfiction narrative A Room of One’s Own (1929). Woolf, in a critique of the denial of a full education to women (most colleges were at that time only open to men), shows her female narrator being denied access to the facilities of a fictional university called Oxbridge, a fusion of the real Oxford and Cambridge Universities. She contrasts this with the freedom of a fictional women’s college called Fernham, which, reflecting the real history of women’s education, has great difficulties in raising finances to continue operations. Woolf compares the sumptuous dinners served to the male students at the wellfinanced Oxbridge to the frugal diet of prunes and custard served to the women at Fernham. Both Woolf and Plath are portraying women as second-class citizens who are expected to survive off of substandard fare. The second stanza of the poem introduces the idea of the mushrooms, and therefore of women, gaining possession of the elements of earth and air. There is a contrast between the smallness and humbleness of the mushroomwomen and their grand ambition. This contrast recurs in stanzas 4 and 5, in the opposition of the softness of the mushroom-women’s fists and the immense feat of strength that they accomplish in lifting earth and even paving stones. The word fists, used instead of hands, implies a fight. The idea of combat is carried through the poem in its military metaphors. The second line of the third stanza implies that women’s growth to eminence is a secret military siege vulnerable to being betrayed and defeated, presumably by men, the ruling power. The military siege metaphor is taken up again in the fifth stanza, where the mushroom-women are described as having weapons like those wielded by medieval soldiers laying siege to a castle. The implied castle here is male power. Similarly, the mushroom-women’s pushing through small holes brings to mind an image of soldiers tunneling into an enemy stronghold, only to pop up unexpectedly within its walls and capture the fort. In the context of these military metaphors, it is in the mushroom-women’s favor to be
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voiceless, as they are able to accomplish their aims covertly. Thus they are able to turn an apparent weakness into strength. It is perhaps illuminating to bear in mind certain prominent women of history who have carefully constructed a persona of feminine weakness behind which they conceal their formidable strength (Queen Elizabeth I of England, for example). The mushroom-women hide their aspirations to world domination under a bland manner and an avoidance of making demands—again, in line with traditional societal expectations of a decorous woman. Those readers who like to draw autobiographical parallels with Plath’s work may feel that these references are bitter comments on what she saw as an expectation to turn a blind eye to the infidelities of which she accused her husband. But whatever personal relevance these elements of her verse had to Plath, they also have universal application to all women who have felt oppressed by expectations to tolerate behavior that they feel is unacceptable. The eighth stanza contains an important turning point in the poem marked by the repetition (anaphora) of the exclamations in lines 23 and 24. These lines emphasize the sheer number of the mushroom-women. Suddenly, the mushrooms, which hitherto appear to be determined but vulnerable, appear to possess the strength of numbers. An argument still made today by those seeking equal rights for women is that over fifty percent of the world’s population are women, yet in many societies they do not enjoy equity. The metaphor in stanza 9 that likens the mushroom-women to tables or shelves suggests that women are a vital but overlooked system of support for society. The reference to their being edible has many symbolic resonances. It can suggest that the mushroom-women are consumed by society or by men. Equally, it can suggest that they nourish and sustain society and men, in the same way that tables or shelves support objects that are more valued than they. The penultimate stanza acknowledges the inherent contradiction at the basis of many women’s consciousness: they desire to assert themselves yet feel shame at doing so, leading to the sense that they have to apologize for being as they are and acting as they do. The third line expands on the idea, previously introduced, of strength in numbers. Not only are there many women in the world, but they have a unique
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power that men lack: the ability to give birth. Thus, by force of sheer numbers and by their ability to multiply, women, like the meek of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, shall inherit the earth. This grandiloquent prophecy is, however, brought down to earth by Plath’s choice of the unheroic image of the humble mushroom to represent women. To portray women as mushrooms shows her ambivalent attitude to her sex and comments wryly on the life-death-rebirth myths of heroes and deities. The mushroom-women, far from appearing as glorious heroes and deities as they reclaim their birthright, remain mere mushrooms, though they are more in number. They are still colorless, earless, eyeless, voiceless, and bland: strange, unformed, and vaguely sinister beings, even to the poem’s end. It can be argued that this is how the mushroom-women have been shaped by an oppressive society, so their unprepossessing form and nature is not entirely their fault. But there is to be no final transformation of the mushrooms as they come into their power, no revelation of a beauty that has lain hidden. The poem also subverts the traditional birth and life-death-rebirth myths in terms of society’s response to the reborn hero. The reappearance of the hero is supposed to be greeted by a joyful public. But in the context of Plath’s poem, women’s reclamation of their birthright will not be welcomed by society. Instead, the last line of the poem likens the victorious mushroom-women to the universally hated figure of the salesman who invades someone’s home by planting his foot in the door. Far from being a triumphant resolution, women’s victory, it is suggested, is only the start of the real war. Source: Claire Robinson, Critical Essay on ‘‘Mushrooms,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Lisa Narbeshuber In the following essay, Narbeshuber examines the ways that Plath used public and private connections in her poetry. Sylvia Plath, in her most ambitious poems, tackles the problem of female selfhood. What is it? Within a world where women are contained by rigid scripts and relegated to silence, how can they revolt? On the one hand, she gives us poems like ‘‘The Applicant’’ and ‘‘The Munich Mannequins,’’ where women, reduced to nothing more than commodities, appear robbed of their humanity. On the other hand, in poems such as ‘‘Lady
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EACH PIECE OF LADY LAZARUS IS FLAGRANTLY ON SHOW, IN MUCH THE SAME WAY AS THE EARLIEST CONDEMNED CRIMINALS WERE ON DISPLAY DURING PUBLIC TORTURES AND EXECUTIONS.’’
Lazarus,’’ she presents selves in revolt, resisting assimilation to patriarchal ideals. In both cases, Plath’s poetry reacts against the absence, especially for women, of a public space, indeed a language for debate, wherein one might make visible and deconstruct the given order of things. In the following, I argue that Plath deliberately blurs the borders between the public and the private in two of the most celebrated, controversial, and critiqued of her poems: ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus.’’ Transforming the conventional female body of the 1950s into a kind of transgressive dialect, Plath makes her personae speak in and to a public realm dominated by male desires. Giving the female construct voice, so to speak, Plath prefigures recent trends in feminist criticism that read the female body as text. Susan Bordo, for example, sees in the emergence of agoraphobia in the 1950s and anorexia in the 1980s rebellious performances: The public wants to see the woman in the home, so the woman responds by fearing to go out (agoraphobia); the public wants to see the woman thin, so the woman starves herself (anorexia). Bordo summarizes her argument in a language that echoes Plath’s poetic desires: In hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia, then, the woman’s body may be viewed as a surface on which conventional constructions of femininity are exposed starkly to view, through their inscription in extreme or hyperliteral form. They are written, of course, in language of horrible suffering. It is as though these bodies are speaking to us of the pathology and violence that lurks just around the corner, waiting at the horizon of ‘‘normal’’ femininity. It is no wonder that a steady motif in the feminist literature on female disorder is that of pathology as embodied protest— unconscious, inchoate, and counterproductive protest without an effective language, voice, or politics, but protest nonetheless. (175)
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As we will see, in order to bring their private selves into the public realm, the speakers in ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ become public performers and rebellious exaggerators, very much like Bordo’s agoraphobic and anorexic. They, too, may have trouble communicating (as we will see most obviously in ‘‘Daddy’’), but this serves to reveal their public voicelessness. Plath’s speakers should not be read as pathological case studies; rather it is the culture, written on their bodies, which is exposed as pathological. Likewise, their acts of rebellion almost necessarily contain an unacceptable, self-destructive side. In various ways, Plath brashly pairs the private with the public, to the point where the personal all but dissolves into a ludicrous public performance or event, with the body as displayed object. This desire in Plath’s poetry to trace the connection between the private and the public has not been explored in any depth in Plath criticism. Instead, most criticism reads ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ around the psychology of Plath’s life, if not exclusively as biography, then as the feminist struggles of a victorious woman over a man or men. For example, critics regard the irrepressible ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ as ‘‘a triumph of vitality’’ (Broe 175); a journey ‘‘from a life of abuse and nightmare to one of liberation’’ (Markey 122); a wonderful, ‘‘searingly self-confident’’ (Van Dyne 55) exhibition of the speaker’s ‘‘true identity as a triumphant resurrecting goddess, the fully liberated, fiery true self . . . ’’ (Kroll 118–9); an expression of the struggling woman artist’s ‘‘independent creative powers . . . She is neither mad nor ‘ugly and hairy,’ but a phoenix, a flame of released bodily energy’’ (Bundtzen 33–4). But such statements are an expression of the commentators’ need to find wholeness and steady thought in Plath’s poetry, defending her against charges of psychosis, and of a need to identify the emergence of some mighty ‘‘Ur-Woman.’’ By focusing on the conclusion of such poems as ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ and limiting their commentary in this way, Plath commentators echo each other’s desires to recover some imaginary totality, despite imagery to the contrary. The poems do not bear out the critics’ assumptions. When Plath evokes images of wholeness in ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ she inevitably undercuts them, emphasizing the systematic play of elements and the constructed ness of meanings. She moves out of the skin of the individual and sketches out the social game, the intersubjective complexes rather than the inner strife that Judith Kroll and other Plath critics focus on. Plath de-
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emphasizes identity and emphasizes the roles of various systems. Plath’s poetry, then, does not so much demonstrate the crushing of the authentic or ‘‘real’’ self by the patriarchal, as show the role of (social) fantasy in the construction of the subject. More than an attack on the male (or in particular her husband or father), her poetry confronts the mentality of the status quo that accepts the ideology of the individual and notions of the natural, or even the personal, self. She unveils and critiques the private, the hidden, and the normalized by parodying various public discourses of power (gendered male), while portraying her personae as objects of those discourses and, thereby, both the agents and the spectacles of punishment. Plath creates an arena for public debate in her poetry by relentlessly placing everyday discursive forms (and objects) in quotation marks. She parodies, not just literary form, but everything from machinery to the mythology of the individual. But for Plath, ideally, parody does not reform; it destroys. For some critics, Plath’s later poetry attempts only an ‘‘imitative recasting’’ (Linda Hutcheon’s description of parody). Hutcheon writes how Plath’s work ‘‘has been seen as a feminist reworking (or parody) of the modes of male modernism which she inherited’’ (54). But Plath’s parodic subversions are not primarily concerned with minor literary debates, such as between the modernist and the romantic. Frederick Buell, for example, writes that, in poems such as ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ Plath mocks romantic ideas of poetic ‘‘incarnation’’ as ‘‘self-destructive unity’’ (149). Similarly, Toni Saldivar writes how Plath mocks the American literary tradition, perpetuated by Harold Bloom, ‘‘of the highly individualistic gnostic imagination that tries to see through the given world in order to see itself in some reassuring self-generated formal identity’’ (112), while Mary Lynn Broe reads ‘‘Daddy’’ as ‘‘pure self-parody,’’ in which ‘‘the metaphorical murder of the father dwindles into Hollywood spectacle’’ (172). These writers are not wrong in their assessments, but, as Hutcheon warns, parody may be limited, in that it often remains conservatively locked within the terms of the discourse it ridicules. Plath sets her sights beyond literary battles or Oedipal struggles. Not restricting herself to ‘‘pure’’ parody, she attempts to reinvent her world and her place in it. ‘‘Daddy,’’ for example, does not so much ‘‘dwindle’’ as explode into Hollywood spectacle, careful to itemize the debris. ‘‘Daddy’’ makes the invisible
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visible, the private public, cracking open the interior spaces traditionally designated for women. Plath stages a public trial, turning the commonplace into spectacle, revealing form as deformity, the natural as commodity, domestic life as torture. It is not surprising, then, that Plath has been lambasted so often for transgressing ‘‘good taste.’’ Nevertheless, her ‘‘bad form,’’ including her spectacles of abuse, provides a key to understanding her later work. Jacqueline Rose, in her analysis of ‘‘Daddy,’’ devotes the entire chapter to the debate over Plath’s ‘‘inappropriate’’ use of metaphor. Rose begins, ‘‘For a writer who has so consistently produced outrage in her critics, nothing has produced the outrage generated by Sylvia Plath’s allusions to the Holocaust in her poetry, and nothing the outrage occasioned by ‘Daddy,’ which is just one of the poems in which those allusions appear’’ (205). In defence of Plath’s outrageous comparisons, Rose, noting how Plath moves backwards and forwards between the German ‘‘Ich’’ and the English ‘‘I,’’ argues that ‘‘Daddy’’ represents, in part, ‘‘a crisis of language and identity’’ (228); after all, Plath was secondgeneration German: ‘‘What the poem presents us with, therefore, is precisely the problem of trying to claim a relationship to an event in which—the poem makes it quite clear—the speaker did not participate’’ (228). Rose asks in conclusion, ‘‘Who can say that these were not difficulties which [Sylvia Plath] experienced in her very person?’’ (229). In her struggle to show that Plath has ‘‘earned’’ the right to represent the Holocaust (‘‘Whatever her father did to her, it could not have been what the Germans did to the Jews,’’ believes Leon Wieseltier [20]), Rose feels it necessary to turn her into a persecuted German. Her persecution for being a woman (daughter, wife), as the poem would have it, is simply not enough. James Fenton, although agreeing with Rose, throws out the suggestion that Plath may have believed she actually was Jewish: Fear of persecution for being a German, whether her own fear or her mother’s, would certainly be part of her heritage. And if she thought of her father as a persecuting figure (rightly or wrongly is not an issue), and she knew her father to be Prussian, then it is by no means far-fetched for her to have wondered whether she might not be a Jew (either from her mother’s side or through simply not knowing quite what a Jew was, but knowing they were persecuted). (14)
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Interestingly, these critics’ rationalizations of her Nazi/Jewish imagery return her poems to autobiography, to the private and the individual, even while Plath’s metaphors cry out for a broader historical and political context. By radically redefining herself in terms of historically grounded, collective worlds, Plath (whether justified or not) successfully displaces the solitary, private individual. When identifying herself with the concentration camp Jew, she compares herself to a community, just as she identifies her father and husband, who play the tormenting Nazis, as a part of an historical political organization. In all of this, Plath suggests that her own contemporary experience—everyday conceptions of femininity, individualism, and the privacy of the family— conforms to collective patterns. She fights the disappearance of the public, its retreat to the privacy of the home, and ‘‘seriality’’ in general. One cannot see the whole from these little pockets of private perception. Stressing, then, the collective engineering of so-called ‘‘private experience,’’ Plath charts a metaphorical map, linking invisible worlds to the cultural processes that inform them. ‘‘Daddy,’’ notoriously, re-stages secret family conflicts between parents and children, husbands and wives. It lifts a veil covering shameful social relations. And just as significantly, Plath ‘‘talks back.’’ The opening lines vividly picture a claustrophobic domestic space: You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. (1–5) This (cultural) space allows for little movement or even speech—she can’t ‘‘breathe or Achoo.’’ For Plath, the domestic realm stands out in the open, but unnoticed, hidden, or—as the poem suggests—underfoot. Plath wants to dismantle the interiority of the ‘‘shoe’’-house, revealing its contents. As the progression of ‘‘Daddy’’ underscores, her new theatre is external, a decidedly worldly place, full of worldly struggles and a worldly language: ‘‘Atlantic’’ (11), ‘‘Polish town[s]’’ (16), ‘‘wars’’ (13), ‘‘Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen’’ (33), ‘‘[t]he snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna’’ (36), ‘‘swastika[s]’’ (43), ‘‘Fascist[s]’’ (48), and so forth. In ‘‘Daddy,’’ private ‘‘family matters’’ link up with large historical struggles, social organizations, and linguistic systems. Moving from the private, ‘‘shoe’’-world to the just as stifling political
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world, consciousness can grasp the machinery that produces and oppresses it. The German language acts like a repressive, mechanical power, bearing down on the collective body: And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. (30–5) In general, Plath suggests the power of language (‘‘an engine’’) to subject the self. But more specifically, she implies that certain styles of discourse violate body and soul more than others. She emphasizes the word ‘‘obscene’’ by placing it at the end of the stanza. To her, German is ‘‘the language obscene,’’ but the word ‘‘obscene,’’ falling where it does, also introduces her own words: as if to suggest her situation and her metaphors are indecent. Through such audacious, dramatic comparisons, Plath pictures human relationships as violent and grotesque spectacles, giving individual, private relationships public currency. At the same time, by having to force the domestic into the public arena, she highlights how these relationships normally remain serialized and closed off from social life. Within this world of conflict, Plath, as I suggested earlier, ‘‘talks back,’’ fantasizing possible alternatives to the pact of silence common among families. She occupies the position of speechlessness, but she struggles to respond: I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. (24–8) Even though she may stutter—a shameful defect?—the persona does not hide her deficiency but gives voice to her fear and anger. Her fixed ‘‘ich’’ may also be seen to mirror the stuttering repetition of the oppressor’s language (‘‘An engine, an engine’’), which ‘‘chuffs’’ out the same sound over and over again, revealing itself as a homogenizing, mechanical force. She responds in kind, with her similarly aggressive ‘‘obscene’’ language: She speaks crudely, and in a most unladylike way, of her ‘‘Polack friend’’ (20) and says to her father, ‘‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard’’ (80). By speaking not only ‘‘the language obscene’’ but also the actual German language (‘‘Ich, ich, ich, ich’’), the persona demonstrates that, even as she attempts to escape her oppressor’s (male) language, it makes heavy
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claims on her. It may even suggest her complicity. Her underlying desire to be desired by her father (‘‘[e]very woman adores a fascist’’ [48]) has caused her, at times, to play along with the terms of his game, living within the rigid configurations of his language. ‘‘Daddy’’ embodies tremendous sociopsychological tension: for Plath utilizes a language of mastery (clarity, directness, multiple worldly allusions) that she simultaneously subverts with her startling array of marginal voices (with nursery rhymes, baby talk, speech defects, ‘‘hysteria’’). But Plath’s parody, while revealing submission to cultural paradigms, transcends ridicule. Plath dramatizes both her imprisonment in the oppressor’s script—doing the important work of laying out dominant discursive codes—and the important points of resistance, on the margins. Within these boundaries, her persona fantasizes herself as powerful, overpowering her tormentors, as when she imagines killing them (‘‘If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—’’ [71]), even driving a stake into her father’s heart. Significantly, in the final act, she desires a collective judgement of this drama: And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. (77–9). She does not want to be alone in her condemnation of the Other. For Plath, this collective problem deserves a collective response, and she aims to give it one. It should be noted, especially in the case of Plath, whose biography attracts so much attention, how she moves from the literary universe to the ‘‘real world.’’ Jacqueline Rose tells how an ‘‘old friend wrote Plath’s mother on publication of the poem in the review of Ariel in Time in 1966 to insist that Plath’s father had been nothing like the image in the poem’’ (229). As this quotation demonstrates, Plath’s poems, intentionally or not, perform a sort of ‘‘talk back’’ or ‘‘back talk,’’ a rudely public, counter-discourse that rejects the family code of silence. By making feelings and ideas public, Plath risks a great deal. She risks banishment by her family and by a public anxious to preserve the status quo of middle-class family life. In ‘‘Daddy,’’ Plath reframes the private in terms of a public discourse, framing personal, family conflicts within larger cultural processes (language, homogenization, technology, politics). Making abstract processes concrete, she gives human faces to collective activities, forcing them into a dramatic, conflictual dialogue. In much of
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her late poetry, Plath repeatedly imagines a fragile self (very often feminized), subject to inhuman, and specifically modern, processes of rationalization (i.e., where the self is ‘‘paved over’’ by logic, statistics, uniformity, etc., processes that are most often viewed, by her, as patriarchal). For example, in ‘‘Face Lift’’ and ‘‘In Plaster,’’ the uniqueness of the old self is literally erased or transformed, while in ‘‘Tulips,’’ ‘‘The Surgeon at 2 a.m.,’’ and ‘‘Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices,’’ the female patient blends into the sterilized, white, homogenous, flat (and patriarchal) surroundings of the hospital, effectively losing her identity or uniqueness. As Rene´e Curry writes with respect to ‘‘In Plaster’’: ‘‘The wintry whiteness of the white walls presses in on the speaker . . . The pressure results in eradication of herself and obliteration of the volatility of life’’ (156). Some critics, including Linda Wagner-Martin (64–5), read the white room in ‘‘In Plaster’’ as representing a place of peace, a haven from social obligations, which is disturbed by the emergence of the blood-red tulips. For me, the persona’s desire to melt into the white surroundings suggests the seductive nature of the institution, encouraging her to abandon her difference and become ‘‘uniform,’’ like the passing nurses. I argue that, for Plath, rationalized worlds eliminate any form of public stage. In ‘‘Three Women,’’ conversation retreats underground in the face of the hospital’s overarching discourse. The three never speak to each other or, for that matter, anyone else. The poem’s sharp stanzaic divisions structurally divide one voice from the next. Against this absence of public forum, Plath, in some of her late poems, exposes and challenges the deep rift between non-public and public types of discourse, between individual and collective experiences and responses. In ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ Plath puts her persona on display, in theatrical and carnivalesque fashion, before the ‘‘peanut-crunching crowd’’ (26). The elements of a reified social matrix come alive, transformed into visible actors capable of disrupting the commodified world through dialogue, gesture, and sheer physical presence: through a ‘‘theatrical / Comeback in broad day’’ (51–2). As in ‘‘Daddy,’’ the death she transcends is the commodification of her body. First, she again identifies with persecuted Jews, the marginalized and hidden. Secondly, her body has been stolen from her and divided into diverse, saleable objects. These body parts/objects belong to the Nazis, who do with them as they like. Her skin, like an electric light source, shines ‘‘[b]right as a
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Nazi lampshade’’ (5). The ‘‘masters’’ convert her foot into a lifeless ‘‘paperweight’’ (7) and her face into ‘‘a featureless, fine / Jew linen’’ (8–9). The poem’s frequently enjambed lines, which appear to sharply break, and yet link, each stanza of three, reflect these images of broken body parts. Althouh Lady Lazarus bears witness to her own perverse commodification (is there any other kind?), her theatrics somehow resurrect a powerful self-possession. She raises the commodity to a sort of blinding ‘‘nakedness,’’ so that herstory no longer belongs to the master. The word ‘‘nakedness,’’ here, reflects John Berger’s use of it; he writes, ‘‘To be naked is to be oneself’’ (54). Lady Lazarus tries to assume herself. She wants to subvert a metaphorical ‘‘nudity’’ that Plath descibes in poems like ‘‘The Applicant’’ and ‘‘The Munich Mannequins.’’ Berger opposes the terms ‘‘nudity’’ and ‘‘nakedness’’: ‘‘To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The site of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.)’’ (54). Both ‘‘The Applicant’’ and ‘‘The Munich Mannequins’’ powerfully dramatize their female figures’ obscene ‘‘nudity.’’ They become pure, voiceless surfaces. In ‘‘The Applicant,’’ the wife, literally a piece of property (a ‘‘living doll’’ [33], ‘‘that’’ [29], or ‘‘it’’ [34–40]), a ‘‘guaranteed’’ (15), completely obedient slave, awaits purchase by the male customer: It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it’s a poultice. You have an eye, it’s an image. (36–8) The parallelism of these lines sets up the male as consumer to her object. The potential wife does not control her own body or actions. In ‘‘The Munich Mannequins,’’ Plath takes the image of socially ‘‘tailored’’ woman to its extreme conclusion. The metaphorical mannequins experience no pleasure; they appear only for the pleasure of others—for the tailor who takes apart, dresses, and assembles ‘‘her,’’ and for the consumer who watches ‘‘her.’’ Not even ‘‘living doll[s]’’ (emphasis added) that ‘‘can sew’’ (34) or ‘‘cook’’ (34) or ‘‘talk’’ (35) as they do in ‘‘The Applicant,’’ these manufactured women appear only for show. These poems practically explode from the stress imposed on the female selves. Their strangling objectification makes their silence that much more painful: Plath says the mannequins are ‘‘[i] ntolerable, without mind’’ (15). The wife-product and the mannequins are, in a way, invisible
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spectacles. ‘‘To be on display,’’ writes Berger, ‘‘is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded’’ (54). By removing mind so absolutely, though, Plath puts on display the women’s ‘‘naked’’ and twisted corpses, So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their smiles These mannequins lean tonight In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome, (10–2) which have been hidden, in part, by the fantasy that she wants it, that she desires the consuming male gaze. Plath leaves the women only ‘‘their’’ bodies, without the pretence of voice or free will, and, by doing so, makes them speak their grotesqueness. The mannequins are ‘‘[o]range lollies’’ (14) (Lolita-like, innocently sexually seductive) on ‘‘silver sticks’’ (14) for men to consume. For Plath, the lack of mind (‘‘Voicelessness’’ 27, the wifely script) is obscene. How can this object recover itself? Or, as Luce Irigaray puts it, ‘‘How can such objects of use and transaction claim the right to speak and to participate in exchange in general?’’ (84). Plath answers with ‘‘Lady Lazarus.’’ As Susan Van Dyne observes with respect to ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ ‘‘Lazarus is simultaneously the performer who suffers and the director who calculates suffering’s effect’’ (57). Unlike the wifeproduct or the Munich mannequins, Lady Lazarus plays both subject and object of her own torture, a frighteningly animated (humanized) lampshade, material witness of its own production. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler posits that the social construction of gender can be subverted through theatrical or parodic acts. Certainly, in ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ the emergence of the human face, to face the inhuman, creates an air of instability and scandal. Consistent with Susan Bordo’s understanding of the woman who becomes anorexic, a dramatic conflict emerges when the desires of the (female) object arise and revolt against what she is, a sort of envelope of death. Lady Lazarus demands her own exposure, to have the skin-like napkin covering her peeled off: Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?— (10–2) This public torture both titillates and threatens. Lady Lazarus seductively conflates the prison camp with a pornographic world of male desire:
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The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot— The big strip tease. (26–9) The crowd has come to witness the effects of her suicide/attempted suicide, ‘‘an art, like everything else’’ (44) that she does ‘‘exceptionally well’’ (45). But far from just watching, they also act upon her, complicit in dissecting her body. Perhaps her sacrifice entails conveying to the disenfranchised crowd (the lower classes in the proverbial peanut gallery) her body as a body of knowledge, their history held up to them. Plath’s drama superimposes a public world over a world that keeps pain and death silent and secret. In this respect, ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ echoes Foucault’s strategic idealization, in Discipline and Punish, of pre-modern communal discourse. In light of Foucault’s work, one can see ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ as an attempt to recover the ritual (found in pre-modern models of punishment) displaced by what Foucault describes as the contemporary, ‘‘coercive, corporal, solitary, secret model of the power to punish’’ (131). Plath’s poetic arena echoes a return to the earlier, ‘‘representative, scenic, signifying, public, collective model’’ (131). Foucault’s extended description and documentation of Damiens, the condemned, details the intense symbolism invested in the prisoner’s body. In effect, the condemned man acted out a theatrical battle between the king he had offended and himself. Power displayed itself before the community. According to Foucault, this lifeand-death struggle was highly unstable, so that the condemned man, by addressing the crowd, might even persuade them into taking his side and attacking the judges. Similarly, Plath introduces a symbolic ritual wherein she can present the body as evidence, and wherein she can directly address the crowd. Each piece of Lady Lazarus is flagrantly on show, in much the same way as the earliest condemned criminals were on display during public tortures and executions. Rather than being kept quietly contained and hidden, as in modern methods of imprisonment, her torture plays in full view of the public: Gentleman, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bones, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. (30–4)
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Executions traditionally allow for the convict’s ‘‘last words’’; and the idea of ‘‘last words’’ has a unique potency here. Like a convict before his execution, Lady Lazarus, under the protection of her own death, can say anything. She has nothing left to lose, since nothing remains of her to punish or prohibit. In this respect, she occupies a position of strength, power, and privilege, which makes her all the more fascinating and attractive to her witnesses. Hence, as Foucault argues, the public execution condemns, while it glorifies, the criminal. The person we watch facing his or her death fascinates on the face of it, while the crime that got him or her there, especially if considered monstrous, suggests the work of an exceptional nature. Foucault clearly prefers the dramatic public nature of the event, the visibility of the players (crowd, judges, criminal, king), and the revolutionary potential of the ritualistic dialogue to the removed, rational procedures of modernity. The witnesses are participants in the execution. They are even ‘‘the possible and indirect victim[s] of this execution’’ (68), as they may admire or identify with the criminal. So just as a whole aspect of the carnival played within the public execution, ‘‘which ought to show only the terrorizing power of the prince’’ (61), the status quo here is put at risk: Authority may be mocked and the criminal transformed into a hero. In the case of Lady Lazarus, she actually orchestrates the public performance of her own death. Plath’s position also bears striking resemblance to the situations of self-flagellating female mystics in the late middle ages. According to Laurie Finke in Feminist Theory, Women’s Writing, female orthodox mystics would ritualistically inflict excessive pain on themselves, and, in doing so, appropriate cultural representations of their bodies: ‘‘She assumes for herself the power to define the authority that represses her sexuality: not man, but God’’ (96). Just as these mystics claimed divine authority (‘‘‘My me is God,’ wrote Catherine of Genoa; Hadewijch of Brabant wished ‘to be God with God’; Angela of Foligno wrote that ‘the Word was made flesh to make me God’’’ [Finke 94]), so Plath wrote in her diary on 13 November 1949: ‘‘I want, I think, to be omniscient . . . I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God’’’ (qtd. in Introduction, Letters Home 40). This position also resembles Sartre’s view that, above all, man desires to be God (69–73). Sartre argues that man’s impulse to possess a particular woman is a transference of
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his desire to lay hold of a world in its entirety. Could Plath’s desire, then, to possess herself as ‘‘woman’’ reflect her desire to be God? Like the self-flagellating mystic, she becomes in her poetry both object and subject, both the one scarred and the one who scars. As we saw in ‘‘Daddy,’’ for example, she both stutters or speaks the language of the oppressed (‘‘talks like a Jew’’) and speaks masterfully. Ultimately, like the female mystic, she achieves representational power at the point that she seems ready (at least metaphorically) to annihilate herself. Just as the mystic poached upon the authority of church and state in her self-inflicted torture, so Plath usurps the technologies that control, construct, and harm her represented bodies. Within the context of the poem, it is she who inflicts pain and mythologizes her self, not the larger institutions of, say, marriage or the church. A bit pathologically (and understandably), she resembles the neurotic who identifies with death—either as abject victim or as sadistic destroyer—in order to understand and master it. Lady Lazarus’s potency comes, in part, from her having risked death and, therefore, becoming impervious to the threats of male power; ironically, death is one of her theatrical tricks. It shocks and encourages an audience to read the writing on her body (which one assumes will later be the writing of her poetry). Death is for her ‘‘an art’’ (44), a ‘‘call[ing]’’ (48), which she does ‘‘exceptionally well’’ (45). It brings her body into the ‘‘broad day’’ (52) as spectacle, ‘‘the theatrical’’ (51). In part, Plath achieves this poetically by delivering parallel constructions that encourage each short, quick, condensed line to stumble into the next, mimicking both the hectic intensity of this spectacular event and the power of the persona’s thoughts: ‘‘A miracle!’’ That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. (55–64) This ‘‘miracle’’ of death and rebirth obviously echoes the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The persona’s assertion that These are my hands My knees.
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I may be skin and bones, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman (31–4) echoes Christ’s words in the New Testament: ‘‘Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have’’ (AV, Luke 24.39). Drawing such parallels, Plath transforms this already spectacular event into the most dramatic, communal, and historical of all public executions. Comparing herself to Christ at the Cross (just as she identified herself with the Jews), she loudly and irreverently forces her personal, private self into the public realm. She is not one person being executed, but a collective, in much the same way that Christ was crucified for the sins of all. Not just one person, but everyone, must take responsibility, especially in this case. Moreover, the story she echoes, like the story of Lazarus, belongs to a patriarchal text, which again emphasizes a certain entrapment (and complicity) in the language and thoughts of her oppressor. At the same time, Plath gathers power by inverting the Cartesian ‘‘I’’ of traditional poetics. Just as she parodies the Christ story, so she parodies the fully, self-conscious, ‘‘male’’ poet. Instead of thinking in terms of internalized reflections or meditations, Plath begins with the production of her body, its textualization. She first appears as a collection of body parts: ‘‘The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth’’ (13). Thereafter, she explores what that body means to her as a thinking person; or more accurately, she lets the body parts speak their meanings (‘‘I have a body, therefore I am’’). She plays the actress, the freak, the criminal, the rebel (‘‘Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air’’ [81–3]), and the saint (with her sought-after bodily artefacts). But she also represents the body reduced to statistic, quantity, or elements, as in the following, chilling lines: Ash, ash— You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. (73–8) Plath’s death-camp metaphor (the cake of soap made from the body; the gold taken from the teeth) shows the persona’s body as violently disembodied, lacking self-possession or unity. Her body, here, belongs to an exterior power that values it best when dead, whether as fragmented and refashioned into useful commodities (soap, a
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lampshade, . . . ), or as, according to another script, resurrected into martyrdom for the salvation of others. And yet, behind the violent commodification, Plath hints at postmodern, nonserialized social relations: the self-possessed body (behind the ‘‘cake of soap’’), displays of wealth and status (‘‘[a] gold filling’’), and a symbol of community and ceremony (‘‘[a] wedding ring’’). She puts on display both commodification and the traces of human community that commodification still allows—that which resists complete assimilation, a counter-memory. Lady Lazarus plays a double role. As a victim, she dramatizes the torture of a woman who has lost her body to an anticommunal, serialized society. But at the same time, she dramatizes the repossession of her body, which partly represents a body of knowledge. This sacrificial body of knowledge offers itself as a gift, a form of recovered memory for the crowds of disenfranchised. The discourses of both ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ attempt to give shape to and make present the order of controls, constructed scripts, and stereotypes. The personae expose both the contemporary social organization and themselves as constructed, rather than simply given or natural. Their identities, therefore, have the potential to be countered and reconfigured. The shape and meaning of human being is open for debate and change. Like Susan Bordo’s agoraphobics and anorexics, ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ puts a human face on collective and dehumanizing processes, as well as aggressively addressing them. This is not just subject and object coming together, but the silent objectified-oppressed becoming subject and addressing the centres of power. Her body is a collection of social artefacts; her body contains history and addresses history, but not piecemeal. Plath shows that the evidence is there to be dredged up and condensed into a sensible shape. In ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ that means a human form. Both ‘‘Lady Lazarus’’ and ‘‘Daddy’’ work out where power can be located, as well as pointing out how this society has become a ‘‘serial’’ one, within which the self cannot gain a view of the whole. Plath stands outside, views, and addresses the very community she silently, passively inhabited. The poems confront the community by staging dramas of punishment. These spectacles of torture, although educational, are simultaneously self-destructive, as the speakers in both poems desire their own deaths. And yet, through these self-flagellating, suicidal personae, we may see diverse aspects of constructed female identity.
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Source: Lisa Narbeshuber, ‘‘The Poetics of Torture: The Spectacle of Sylvia Plath’s Poetry,’’ in Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2004, pp. 185–203.
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, edited by Mark Hussey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.
SOURCES Alvarez, A., The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, Random, 1972, p. 20, reprinted in ‘‘Sylvia Plath (1932–1963),’’ in Modern American Literature, edited by Joann Cerrito and Laurie DiMauro, Vol. 3, 5th ed., St. James Press, 1995, pp. 19–26. Broe, Mary Lynn, ‘‘The Colossus: ‘In Sign Language of a Lost Other World,’’’ in Protean Poetic: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, University of Missouri Press, 1980, pp. 43–79. Hoyle, Ben, ‘‘Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s Son Commits Suicide,’’ in Times (London, England), March 23, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5956380. ece (accessed July 25, 2009). King James Bible, Matthew 5:5, http://kingjbible.com/ matthew/5.htm (accessed July 26, 2009). Lant, Kathleen Margaret, ‘‘The Big Strip Tease: Female Bodies and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath,’’ in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1993, pp. 620–69. Materer, Timothy, ‘‘Sylvia Plath,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 152: American Novelists Since World War II, 4th ser., edited by James Giles and Wanda Giles, Gale Research, 1995, pp. 194–201. Oates, Joyce Carol, ‘‘The Death Throes or Romanticism: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath,’’ in Southern Review, Summer 1973, pp. 501–502, reprinted in ‘‘Sylvia Plath (1932– 1963),’’ in Modern American Literature, edited by Joann Cerrito and Laurie DiMauro, Vol. 3, 5th ed., St. James Press, 1995, pp. 19–26. Plath, Sylvia, ‘‘Mushrooms,’’ in The Colossus, Faber & Faber, 1967, pp. 34–35.
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Wain, John, Review of The Colossus, in the Spectator, January 13, 1961, p. 50, reprinted in ‘‘Sylvia Plath (1932– 1963),’’ Modern American Literature, edited by Joann Cerrito and Laurie DiMauro, Vol. 3, 5th ed., St. James Press, 1995, pp. 19–26.
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FURTHER READING Middlebrook, Diane, Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath—A Marriage, Penguin, 2004. This book is a critically acclaimed account of the relationship between Plath and her poet husband, Ted Hughes. Middlebrook analyzes how each saw the other as a means to becoming the writers they wanted to be. Plath, Sylvia, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Karen V. Kukil, Knopf, 2000. Though Plath’s diaries were originally published in 1982, they were heavily abridged by Hughes. This volume is a full transcription of the diaries that Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Rupp, Leila J., and Verta A. Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s, Ohio State University Press, 1990. This accessible overview of the history of the modern feminist movement is designed for use in schools and colleges. It includes an examination of the roles of the Equal Rights Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed., Sylvia Plath: The Critical Heritage, Routledge, 1989. This is a collection of contemporary reviews and essays on the work of Sylvia Plath written from 1960 to 1985. It is a useful introduction to Plath’s work.
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The Old Stoic EMILY BRONTE¨ 1846
The Bronte¨ family was a remarkable literary phenomenon in the first half of the nineteenth century. The father of the family, Patrick Bronte¨, was an Irish farm boy who lifted himself up by his own literary and scholarly efforts to become a country parson of the Church of England. The four children who survived to adulthood became important authors. Two of them, Charlotte and Emily, wrote novels considered among the most important in English literary history: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights. The other two siblings, Branwell and Anne, also made outstanding literary achievements, but all four died young, probably of tuberculosis. Emily Bronte¨’s ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ is part of the body of poetry produced by the Bronte¨ siblings that has been generally neglected in favor of their famous novels. The poem first appeared in 1846 in the volume Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, a collection of verse that included poems by all three sisters. ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ is one of the few pieces of poetry by any of the Bronte¨s to go into wide circulation, appearing, for instance, in every edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse. The poem is an idealized description of a Stoic philosopher. It expresses his innermost thoughts and ideals as disdain for the common desires of humanity and then as a prayer to the gods. The literary work of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte¨, as well as that of their brother Branwell, grew out of their collaborative childhood writing projects, or juvenilia, in which they built
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an inheritance from an aunt made all three sisters self-sufficient without having to teach further. Emily herself continued her studies much further than her sisters, learning Latin from her father and pursuing study as a sort of monomania to the exclusion of other activities and social connections. As was not unusual in middle-class families of their era, the Bronte¨ children entertained themselves with ambitious literary projects. They wrote copiously, including handwritten and illustrated versions of magazines, and produced plays to be enacted by their toy soldiers and dolls. More exceptionally, their literary productions all had a unified theme, namely the epic saga of the Empire of Angria, a fictitious country they created in central Africa. What was unique was that the Bronte¨s continued to pursue these kinds of projects as adults. They frequently spent evenings reading to each other stories and vignettes set in their fantasy worlds. Emily and Anne later branched off, creating their own Gondal Saga, about a fictitious island in the North Pacific. All of Emily’s poetry, including ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ was written as part of this saga. ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ itself was probably meant as a character sketch for use in the fictional world.
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up a consistent picture of fantasy worlds of their own creation. Although specific references to the fantasy realms of Angria and Gondal were carefully edited out of the publications, ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ and even Wuthering Heights were originally part of, or at least intimately connected to, this fantasy literature produced by the Bronte¨s.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Emily Jane Bronte¨ was born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, England. Two years later, her family moved to Haworth in Yorkshire, where she would spend almost her entire life. She had two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, and a brother Branwell. Quite unusually for a middle-class family, the sisters all determined to support themselves through their own labor, never seriously seeking proposals of marriage. Given the limitations placed on English women at that time, they had to work as teachers. Emily served as an ordinary classroom teacher at Miss Pratchett’s school in Halifax for almost a year, and later spent a year in Brussels with Charlotte and Branwell, where she both studied and taught piano. At the end of the year,
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In 1845, Charlotte found a notebook with some of Emily’s verse in it and conceived of the idea of publishing a volume of poetry by all three sisters. Emily was mortified to have her privacy invaded in this way, but she eventually agreed. Charlotte edited the poems, removing all references to Angria and Gondal, and gave them titles (for this reason, Emily’s poem is sometimes referred to by its first line, ‘‘Riches I hold in light esteem’’). On May 22, 1846, the volume was published, under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The volume was in general favorably reviewed but sold only two copies. Nevertheless, the three sisters rushed to publish novels. Still working under their pseudonyms, in 1847 Emily and Anne published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey as a set, while Charlotte published Jane Eyre separately. These works met with more success. Branwell was desperately trying to start a literary career of his own, but with little success. In September 1848, he died (possibly of tuberculosis, but he had become an alcoholic and opium addict), and the three sisters attended his funeral. All three caught colds. Emily’s case most likely reactivated a latent infection of tuberculosis and she died at home in Haworth, England on December 19, 1848.
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POEM TEXT Riches I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn; And lust of Fame was but a dream That vanished with the morn— And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is—‘Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty.’ Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ’Tis all that I implore— Through life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure!
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POEM SUMMARY In three stanzas, Bronte¨’s ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ also known by its first line, ‘‘Riches I hold in light esteem,’’ briefly invokes several commonplaces about Stoicism (a form of Greek philosophy popular in the Hellenistic and Roman eras), appeals for the grace of Stoic liberty, and seeks to find a type of salvation within Stoicism. The entire text is a quotation from an unnamed speaker, whom Emily’s sister Charlotte, when she edited the poem for publication, chose to call an old Stoic, from his central philosophical ideas and his evident nearness to death. However, it is worth noting that there are no clues in the poem as to the gender of the narrative voice.
Stanza 1 Stanza 1 lists a number of ordinary human desires that Stoicism considers to be worthless. The first line addresses the love of wealth. The narrative voice of the poem expresses a complete lack of interest in wealth. The moral perfection and happiness of the Stoic sage (as the ideal archetype of a Stoic philosopher is often called) comes entirely from his own interior psychological condition, so the status of his material possessions and wealth is irrelevant. The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135), whom the Bronte¨s most likely read as the source of their knowledge of Stoicism, advises his students in his Handbook to give up all concern for external matters like wealth and property in order to cultivate the tranquility of mind that makes the sage independent of the external world: ‘‘If you want to make progress, give up all considerations like these: ‘If I neglect my property, I will have nothing to live on. . . . ’ It is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty.’’ He
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urges his students to tell themselves that poverty (or any other adverse condition they experience) must be ignored since worry about what they cannot control will only cause unhappiness; to tell themselves about not desiring what they cannot control: ‘‘‘This is the price of tranquility; this is the price of not being upset.’ Nothing comes for free.’’ Epictetus does not think much even of the disinterested use of wealth in philanthropy to help one’s friends. The difficulty is that pursing money, even for a worthy goal, is viewed as an inherently degrading process. So the person who wants charity is asking the person who gives it to injure his own spiritual condition in order to help the recipient. Such a person must ask himself: ‘‘Which do you want more, money or a selfrespecting and trustworthy friend? Then help me toward this, and do not expect me to do things that will make me lose these qualities.’’ Wealth, which most people consider to be a great source of happiness, does not concern the Stoic sage because the possession of it is not something that is within his control. Rather, one must usually submit oneself to the control of external forces in order to acquire wealth, and this will inevitably lead to unhappiness. In line 2, the narrative voice of the poem dismisses love as a matter of serious concern, finding it laughable instead. The meaning of the line is not clear. Bronte¨ may mean love in some general sense, or she may be using the word as a euphemism for sexual desire. In the former case, Bronte¨ is alluding to one of the elements of Stoic ethics strangest to modern feeling. The Stoic feels able to love himself to the degree that he had perfected the Stoic ethical teaching within himself and freed himself from the perturbations of the world, attaining the perfection that naturally belongs to the world itself as a whole. He values other human beings, that is, loves them, not according to any conventional criteria such as blood relation or marriage, but according to the degree they have attained stoic virtue for themselves, that is, to the degree they are like the sage himself. This leads to a somewhat surprising consequence: the sage’s concern for even his own children extends only to the degree to which they are able to be taught and are able to put into practice Stoic ethics so that they themselves may become sages. The sage is only able to love others to the degree they resemble himself, or to put it another way, to the degree they both resemble god. While the sage does not disdain love in this specific sense—indeed, it is among his dearest virtues—he does disdain the conventional signs of love as expressed by most people. This
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conventional love is what the Bronte¨ character mocks. It is within this context that Epictetus is able to say with almost brutal honesty: You are foolish if you want your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, since you are wanting things to be up to you that are not up to you, and things to be yours that are not yours.
And again, ‘‘If you kiss your child or wife, say that what you are kissing is a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset.’’ The sage is no more disturbed by the death of his own wife or child than he would be at the death of a stranger’s wife or child. All such a death amounts to is that something that was given to him for a brief time by powers beyond his control was taken away again in the same way. Like so much else, the ties of family and friendship are revealed, upon Stoic examination, to be external goods that are beyond our control, and so the sage cannot allow his happiness to depend on them or to become sad when they are lost. If, on the other hand, Bronte¨ is talking about sex, then the matter is even more clear cut. The satisfaction of desire with another person is clearly something that is not within the power of an individual to control, so the sage will find neither happiness nor disappointment in it or its lack. Epictetus teaches: At each thing that happens to you, remember to turn to yourself and ask what capacity you have for dealing with it. If you see a beautiful boy or woman, you will find the capacity of self-control for that.
In lines 3 and 4 of stanza 1 of Bronte¨’s poem, the narrative voice says that fame is an illusion no more lasting than a dream. Fame, in a Victorian context, as well as in an ancient one, is more likely to mean a political career and the power and influence that come with it, rather than celebrity from working in the entertainment industry as the word might connote in twenty-first century society. Bronte¨, throughout the poem, refers to core Stoic ideas. While Stoicism offered what it claimed to be infallible advice for any sage in a position of power, it disdained seeking fame and power as it did anything that entailed a desire for things beyond human control. While many people might consider that fame or power are goods in themselves that would bring happiness, in the Stoic conception, they are external conditions that one cannot be sure of obtaining, so their desire will inevitably lead to unhappiness. Even if one obtains fame, it will only lead to a greater desire for fame. So the only answer is to recognize that fame is something
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outside of human control and not desirable. While Epictetus tells his students, ‘‘You can be invincible if you do not enter any contest in which victory is not up to you,’’ he also cautions them that the happiness of the philosopher is of a very different and higher order than the happiness that seems to come from those who gain fame and honor from holding high public office: For if the really good things are up to us, neither envy nor jealousy has a place, and you yourself will want neither to be a general or a magistrate or a consul, but to be free. And there is one road to this: despising what is not up to us.
This thought leads naturally into the next stanza, concerning Stoic ideas of liberty.
Stanza 2 Stanza 2 of the poem is a prayer directed toward the gods, asking only that they not interfere with the narrator’s interior psychological condition but grant him freedom. Despite its mechanistic worldview, prayer is by no means foreign to the Stoics who considered piety to be a natural virtue. In fact, one of the greatest masterpieces of Stoic literature is a hymn to Zeus composed by the second head of the school, the Greek philosopher Cleanthes (c. 330–c. 232 BCE . The fact that the freedom the Stoic asks for is contrasted with the gods possibly intervening in the innermost process of his being suggests what freedom is for a Stoic. It is not license to pursue selfish pleasure. It is not even freedom to speak and act as one wishes, since the Stoic realizes that it is in the nature of things that these will be constrained by forces outside of his control. It is instead the freedom to think in accord with nature and discover by his own experiences and reflection how he can attain happiness and how he can make the right decisions about what is within his control and what is not within his control. He cannot ask the gods to supply this knowledge to him, since it is the ruling principle within himself that makes these decisions and that is, for the Stoic, the irreducible core of human identity. If the gods intervened there, there would be nothing left that was genuinely human. For the Stoic, Epictetus makes clear, the gods have no need to intervene in the interior condition of a human being but only in the affairs of the exterior world. Stoic piety demands belief that the gods arrange the affairs of the universe justly. Therefore, the Stoic need only live in accord with this divine arrangement of the world. He does not require any help through a special revelation or intervention. While the Stoics certainly believed that the gods
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communicated with humankind through omens and prophecy, the motions of the stars, and the behavior of birds, these communications concerned only the outside world. If a Stoic receives an unfavorable sign, according to Epictetus, he should tell himself: ‘‘None of these signs is for me, but only for my petty body or my petty property or my petty [legal affairs] or children or wife.’’ Since the gods have arranged the world perfectly, it is up to the Stoic to see how any omen, and any outcome of an omen, is actually for the best: ‘‘For all signs are favorable if I wish, since it is up to me to be benefited by whichever of them turns out correct.’’ For the Stoic sage, such as the narrator of the poem, who internalized the divine principles within himself and makes the same judgments as the gods, even divine signs are merely another object on which to exercise his judgment. While to truly live in freedom is to be no different than a god, freedom must come from within the individual and cannot be given by any outside condition, even the gods.
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Stanza 3 Stanza 3 recapitulates in summary the ideas of the other two stanzas. The narrative voice, even as it sees death approaching, does not wish for a prolongation of life, or for any other apparent good that might not be forthcoming. The narrative voice appears only to live through its innermost self in freedom from desires for the things that are not within its control and the hardihood to endure with indifference circumstances that the world calls misfortunes. The speaker invokes the very factors that elevate the Stoic sage above the world in the only kind of salvation available to the Stoic.
Think of some of your favorite characters from novels you have read. Write a character sketch of them in the form of poetry. Use descriptive language and a poetic rhyme scheme like the one used in ‘‘The Old Stoic.’’ The fantasy material the young Bronte¨s circulated among themselves about the worlds of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal imitated the then newly popular publishing form—the magazine. Read some of young Charlotte and Branwell’s Angria articles from An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨, edited by Christine Alexander, and The Works of Patrick Branwell Bronte¨, edited by Victor Neufeldt, and republish them in your own words as a blog or Web site. Read Epictetus’s Handbook. Compare its precepts to your own moral beliefs and ideas that guide your behavior. Report to your class on the differences and similarities using a Venn diagram. Many Web sites exist to assist authors in creating their own fantasy world-building exercises. Visit some of them and start to build your own world and share the results with your class. Good places to start include The Language Creation Society (http://conlang.org) and the world-building page at the Eclectic Company, which is a well-maintained page of links to further sites at http://www.bmarch.atfreeweb. com/Worldbuilding.htm.
THEMES Salvation As positively as Stoicism was viewed by the educated middle class of nineteenth century Britain, that culture was nevertheless a deeply Christian one, and it was quite usual for Christian ideas to insinuate themselves into Victorian endorsements of the ancient philosophy. Bronte¨ does an excellent job of avoiding this temptation, but she moves in that direction in her apparent conception of Stoic salvation when she speaks about death. Her narrator prays for the same indifference to circumstance he knew in life to persist in death. If
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the moment of death is meant, so that the end of life can be met fearlessly, that is not incompatible with Stoicism. But some contemporary readers may not resist the temptation to read the contrast drawn between life and death as being between life and death as the afterlife (which is not a factor in Stoicism). The passionless existence of the Stoic sage was often taken as the model of the existence of the saved Christian in the world to come, as
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though salvation consists of becoming like a Stoic sage. But the degree to which Bronte¨ herself intended this is debatable.
Stoicism Bronte¨’s ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ gives a series of private thoughts and mental prayers in the voice of a character devoted to Stoicism and meant to be typical of that philosophy. Stoicism is a system of philosophy devised in the years after 300 BCE by the Greek philosopher Zeno. He was certainly Greek by culture but he came from Citium on Cyprus where much of the population was Phoenician, and sources, which are about 500 years later than his period, suggest he may have been of Phoenician descent. Zeno came to Athens to study philosophy, desiring to live according to the same manner of life as the great Greek philosopher Socrates. Zeno did not study at the Platonic Academy, however, or with the students of Aristotle at the Lyceum, either of which might have been viewed as successors to Socrates, but with the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes. The Cynics were concerned exclusively with human behavior and felt that men ought to live in accord with their essentially animal character, hence the name Cynic, which means canine. After a decade of study, Zeno began to teach his own new philosophy at the Stoa Poikile (the porch of the paintings), an Athenian public art gallery from which his school took its name. Zeno’s students and immediate successors were Cleanthes and Chrysippus. Stoicism eventually became the dominant form of philosophy in the early Roman Empire. The first-century Greek Stoic teacher Epictetus and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the following generation are responsible for the only surviving extended treatises of the school, but the thought of the original Stoics are preserved in numerous quotations by later authors such as the Roman orator Cicero. Stoic philosophy differed from Platonism and Aristotelianism in being entirely materialistic, believing that nothing existed apart from physical matter. The Stoics rejected the idea that whatever faculty of a human being is responsible for thoughts and feelings was some type of nonmaterial entity of a different character than the rest of the world, such as a soul, spirit, or divine spark, but rather were the results of a material process just like anything else that
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can be observed. Stoics by no means rejected the idea of god, but they held that god was simply the totality of the universe and, in particular, the cause of the universe existing in the best possible way. Just as human beings have reason, god is the reasoning power (logos) that arises from the body of the universe. Cleanthes praised this being in his poetic Hymn to Zeus, though he insisted that all divine names, not just Zeus, rightly apply to this god. The Stoics insisted that the universe as a whole was perfect, and that if some condition or event, such as a storm that destroyed farmers’ crops or the death of a child, seemed imperfect to the human beings it affected, that was because their limited perspective was incapable of seeing the whole. Cleanthes expressed the idea in his hymn by saying that even what is hated by human beings is lovely in the eyes of god. Accepting the traditional Greek view that matter is composed of the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—the Stoics held that the universe must exist as part of a greater cosmic cycle. Since fire is the most perfect element, the universe must originally have been all fire. The other elements are produced by the life process of fire, and their creation and recombination brought into being the universe as we experience it. But, since it is necessary for the universe to be as perfect as possible, it will strive to return to the condition of being all fire after many long ages. Then the process will repeat infinitely. Since, according to the Stoics, the universe is perfect, any deviation would be less than perfect, so each universe created between the periods of fire (ekpyrosis) will be identical, down to every individual person such as Socrates or Thomas Jefferson living again in exactly the same way they were known to have lived their lives. Thus, everything that happens is preordained and outside of human control. While Stoics did not conceive of any form of human survival after the dissolution of the physical body (since they believed nothing existed that was not material), every human being, would, nevertheless, live again, as it were, in each successive age Since according to the Stoic view it is impossible to change the state of the natural world, it follows that the best way to live is in accord with nature as it actually exists. A human being must
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STYLE Lyric Verse ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ is written in traditional poetic form as lyric verse. The poem consists of twelve lines organized into three four-line stanzas. Each line has a specific number of metrical feet, either four (tetrameter) or three (trimeter). A foot is a group of syllables; in this poem, the meter is iambic, which is to say most of the feet are iambs, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The iamb is the most common foot in English poetry. Each stanza has two couplets. The first line of each couplet is a tetrameter, the second a trimeter. The lines rhyme, that is, have the same vowel and final consonant sounds in the last stressed syllable, in the pattern ABAB within each stanza. The poem is relatively free of alliteration (repetition of the same sounds), personification (the attribution of human qualities to animals and inanimate objects), and other meaningful poetic devices.
Fantasy World-Building
Monks symbolize stoicism (Ó 2009 / Jupiter Images)
learn to distinguish what he cannot control (external circumstances) from what he can control (his reactions and feelings about external circumstances). Suffering is caused by wishing things to be different than they are and wishing to change what one is powerless to change. The Stoic sage, who has perfected his ethical training, wishes things to be just as they are and completely frees himself from suffering by perfecting his interior psychological composition. He is not emotionless, as is popularly conceived, but rejects those emotions (strong passions) that are not subordinate to reason as though they were a sort of mental illness. In this way, he becomes a god since his reason becomes identical to the right reason that regulates the universe in the best possible way. The sage does not feel any desire to obtain fame, wealth, power, or any of the other things that ordinary human beings are constantly making themselves miserable over.
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All four of the Bronte¨ siblings spent their youths and much of their adult lives engaged in writing what is usually called their juvenilia, the creation of complex fantasy worlds documented in various literary forms. Indeed, since even her novel Wuthering Heights grew out of this context, it can be said that Emily always remained enmeshed in these fantasy worlds. In June 1826, the four Bronte¨ children (Emily was eight years old) began to collaborate to produce plays in which the leading actors were a set of toy soldiers and various dolls that their father had given them. These soon grew into the Glass Town Saga about an imperialist kingdom carved out of central Africa. The children did not make a single story on this premise, but rather documented the history and culture of Glass Town (later Verdoplis), which was the capital of the Empire of Angria. Glass Town was populated by characters molded after the politicians and authors who filled the pages of Blackwood’s and Town and Country magazines. Indeed, the principle form of documentation for the saga was hand drawn and written versions of these magazines that the children drew and wrote themselves, filling them with illustrations, poems, literary reviews and notes, political news, and every kind of material found in the actual publications, but about events in Glass Town rather than London. As they grew older, the children split: Charlotte and Branwell continued the original fantasy in works generally called the Angria Saga, while
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Anne and Emily started over, creating their own world of Gondal, set on a mythical island in the North Pacific Ocean. This kind of detailed building of a fantasy world, in which there was no coherent story but rather a variety of documents in which stories could be traced from piece to piece with the overall goal to provide a general framework for narrative, was exceptional in the nineteenth century. When the Bronte¨s began to publish, they suppressed the world-building elements of their literature. World building of this kind is now commonplace in the burgeoning publishing market for fantasy literature. During World War I, English writer J. R. R. Tolkien set out to create his own fantasy world, based on his scholarly studies of philology (historical or comparative linguistics), rather than the perusal of magazines devoted to popular middleclass culture. Tolkien proceeded in more or less the same way as the Bronte¨s, building up a world out of a variety of documents that looked more like a complete history of a civilization than a novel. (Branwell had also created an artificial language for Angria, though he never went as far in that direction as Tolkien.) Tolkien tried and failed to publish some of this material, but he eventually brought out a selection of narratives from his world of Middle Earth, beginning with The Hobbit in 1937 and followed in 1954 with The Lord of the Rings. After the phenomenal success of those works, Tolkien’s son Christopher began to publish the original background material and has brought out more than a dozen volumes of his father’s notes. In contemporary literature, the writing of narratives set in completely created fantasy worlds is a well-published genre. More remarkably, numerous Web sites exist specifically to facilitate world building whose users are not necessarily aiming at a formal publication but are interested in pursuing the enterprise for its own sake.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Pseudonymity When the Bronte¨s undertook to publish their poetry in 1846, they did so under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis (Emily’s pseudonym), and Acton Bell. Over the next two years, when they brought out their novels, they used the same pseudonyms. The practice of publishing under assumed names was more common in the nineteen century than in modern literature. Certainly it was not a secret to contemporary reviewers
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that the given authors were pseudonyms, though none suspected the poets to be women. One reason the Bronte¨s used this screen was because, according to Charlotte (in her introduction to the no longer anonymous second 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights), they were ‘‘averse to personal publicity.’’ There was a more fundamental reason, however, because they ‘‘had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.’’ This was certainly true, despite the fact that the most eminent novelist of the previous generation was undoubtedly Jane Austen. Women novelists had been a cliche´d term for some time, associated especially with Gothic literature and with excessive emotionalism, poor style, and little literary merit. The Bronte¨s’ poems, as well as their initial novels, were all published at their own expense. This was a common practice in the nineteenth century, when Jane Austen, John Keats, and many other leading authors had to pay to publish their own works. Circumstances changed in the twentieth century, however, and today only vanity presses take money from their authors. Given the changes in the publishing industry brought about by the Internet, self-publication may again become a possible outlet for serious literary work.
Epictetus Epictetus was a Stoic philosopher who lived in the late first century CE . He is almost certainly the source of Bronte¨’s knowledge of Stoicism, through the 1758 English translation of his works by Elizabeth Carter. Epictetus has sometimes been thought to be the old Stoic of Bronte¨’s poem, but her work contains no information that relates to the known facts of Epictetus’s life. Epictetus was more concerned with giving advice for practical living, especially for living in a compromised world, than in presenting the kind of systematic philosophy aimed at by the early Stoics. Epictetus was born as a slave in Hierapolis in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in the mid-first century CE . Epictetus is not a real Greek name but rather is the word that means ‘‘bought.’’ He came to Rome as a slave of Epaphroditus, himself a freed slave of the emperor who worked in the government bureaucracy in the capital. How or when Epictetus learned Stoicism is unknown. But after being freed, he worked as a teacher of the philosophy, first in Rome and then in Nicopolis (modern Bulgaria). Epictetus wrote nothing
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1840s: Women writers are dismissed as incapable of producing serious literature because of their gender. The commercial success of women novelists in particular is taken as evidence of artistic inferiority.
Today: Anonymous publication is rare since authors strive to create name recognition to increase book sales. Pseudonyms may be used by writers wishing to establish separate brands: Nora Roberts writes romances under her own name, but pens mysteries as J. D. Robb.
Today: Gender is not a criteria in establishing literary merit. Women writers are judged among the greatest living authors and women frequently win the most prestigious literary awards such as the Nobel Prize.
1840s: The genre of the fantasy novel, in which an entirely fictional reality is created in the most minute detail, does not exist. Today: Thanks largely to the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, the fantasy novel is one of the most successful genres, though many literary critics still dismiss it.
himself, but attracted many aristocratic students, including Arrian, who eventually became a provincial governor and also wrote an important surviving history of Alexander the Great. Arrian wrote up and published his notes of Epictetus’s lectures that filled several books under the title Discourses, of which the first four survive. Arrian also excerpted this work into a brief manual known simply as the Encheiridion (‘‘handbook’’). These publications are the source for knowledge of Epcitetus’s thought and are generally published under Epictetus’s name. A commentary on Epictetus’s lectures by the fifth-century Greek Neoplatonic philosopher Simplicius also survives. The details of Epictetus’s life come from this work. The most famous episode of his life is probably fictitious. Supposedly, while he was still a slave, Epaphroditus wished to test how far his Stoic indifference to suffering went and had Epictetus bound and tortured until his leg was broken, but he elicited no greater response than calmly telling Epaphroditus that his leg bone had snapped.
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1840s: Authors, not only women, frequently publish their work anonymously (or pseudonymously) for various reasons.
1840s: Poetry is generally considered more important than prose from an artistic viewpoint, and it has a wide reading public. Today: Poetry, though still given critical prestige, hardly overshadows prose, especially fiction, and new poetry is generally read by only a small literary elite.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The first person to read ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ was Bronte¨’s sister Charlotte when she read the private notebook of poems in 1845. She was impressed enough to reveal her invasion of her sister’s privacy, which had a high cost in awkwardness within the family, and to be able to persuade her sister to publish the work. The initial reviews of the poetry volume of all three sisters were generally favorable. The four contemporary reviews are often reprinted, for example, in The Scribner Companion to the Bronte¨s by Barbara and Gareth Lloyd Evans. A reviewer in the Critic (July 4, 1846) was the most enthusiastic, saying of the collection, ‘‘Here we have good, wholesome, refreshing, vigorous poetry—no sickly affectations, no nambypamby, no tedious imitations of familiar strains, but original thoughts, expressed in the true language of poetry.’’ A reviewer of the same date in the Athenaeum singled out Emily’s poems (published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell) as superior to her sisters’: ‘‘[The] instinct of song . . . [rises] in . . . Ellis, into an inspiration, which may yet
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Charlotte as reflecting Emily’s intentions and goes further, adding that it refers to Epictetus as the character described in the poem, thus reading it as unrelated to Gondal. Yet, she also takes the liberty desired by the narrative voice of the poem as expressing Emily’s own desire, not for freedom in the Stoic sense, but in the more modern sense of freedom from responsibility. Ingham generally reads the poem as expressive of an illness Emily suffered in 1838, although the poem was most likely composed three years later.
CRITICISM Bradley A. Skeen
Liberty bell (Image copyright Racheal Grazias, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
find an audience in the outer world.’’ A review in the October issue of Dublin University Magazine was also favorable, while a reviewer in the Spectator (November 11, 1848) found the poems mannered and commonplace in their subject matter, but thought the poets might be capable of improvement to an acceptable standard of writing if their work became more disciplined. Just as the original reviewers did not single out ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ for special comment, it has received very little attention from modern critics, even among the neglected Bronte¨ poems. However, Margaret Maison, in her 1978 article in Notes and Queries pointed out that Bronte¨’s poetry as a whole, not merely ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ shows a knowledge of Stoicism. It is probable that she had read the first-century Stoic Epictetus who was a very popular author in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, Maison points out that Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 translation of Epictetus was intended for the education of girls and Bronte¨ would almost certainly have used it, both as a student and as a teacher. Barring any additional information being discovered, this translation is the most likely source for Bronte¨’s knowledge of Stoicism. Patricia Ingham in The Bronte¨s treats the appellation ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ given the poem by
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Skeen is a classics professor. In this essay, he explores the context of ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ in the Gondal Saga in relation to the development of the modern genre of fantasy. The main unanswered question about Bronte¨’s ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ is how it is to be understood in relationship to Gondal, the fantasy realm created by Emily and her sister Anne. The problem concerns all of her poetry, the bulk of which comes from two manuscript notebooks in which she made fair copies in 1844 of older poems that she wished to preserve. One she headed ‘‘Gondal Poems’’ and the other simply with her initials, E. J. B. ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ however, comes from neither source, but from a single sheet dated March 1, 1841, now in the Honresfeld collection kept in private hands by the Law family. The first critic to seriously consider the Gondal background of Emily’s writing was Fannie Ratchford in two studies published in the 1940s and 1950s, especially in Gondal’s Queen. Since it was acknowledged that even Wuthering Heights grew out of Gondal material, she naturally took all of Emily’s poetry as related to the cycle of material about the mythical realm. The fact that Emily did not write the name Gondal in the E. J. B. Notebook or on other manuscripts is not a serious objection since it is not known what their original organization might have been, except that Emily’s surviving sister Charlotte later destroyed most of the Gondal material, and that many of the surviving scraps of poetry were torn out of larger notebooks at some point in the past, most likely by collectors. Ratchford found that Emily’s poetry as a whole could be fit together like broken pieces of a statue, to suggest the original outline of the Gondal Saga without
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
EMILY AND HER SIBLINGS CAN BE SEEN AS THE FIRST GREAT WORLD BUILDERS, ANTICIPATING THE MODERN EXPLOSION OF THE EXPLORATION OF FANTASY WORLDS AS
Charlotte Bronte¨’s 1853 novel Villette explores many of the same Stoic philosophical ideas that Emily touched upon in ‘‘The Old Stoic.’’ The 2003 encyclopedia by Lisa Paddock and Carl Rollyson, The Bronte¨s A to Z, gives an introductory treatment of the Bronte¨s’ lives and works. Emily Bronte¨: A Critical Anthology (1973) by Jean Pierre Petit presents a collection of critical essays on Bronte¨’s work, beginning some of the first reviews of the Bell poetry volume and continuing through modern studies by figures like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. Steve Vine’s Emily Bronte¨ (1998) in Twayne Publisher’s ‘‘English Author’’ series gives a balanced overview of her life and work.
Lawrence C. Becker’s A New Stoicism (1998) reinterprets Stoicism as a moral philosophy for use in the modern world.
Christine Alexander has published two volumes of material relevant to Charlotte’s writing about Angria as a young adult in An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte¨ (1987, 1991). Xavier S. Thani Nayagam compares Indian and Stoic philosophy in his 1962 lecture Indian Thought and Roman Stoicism.
Bronte¨’s Wuthering Heights (first published in 1848 and widely available today) is her only novel and is a great story of love and heartbreak that had endured through the years.
leaving any part of it unaccounted for. The fact that Emily continued to write new Gondal poetry, even after Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, would seem to argue strongly for Ratchford’s interpretation. Yet, this view has not found favor with many later critics. The more recent trend in relating Emily’s verse to Gondal, as presented in the article on her poetry
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A NEW POPULAR GENRE.’’
in The Oxford Companion to the Bronte¨s, for instance, has been to separate her verse from Gondal as far as possible. The ‘‘purely Gondal reading of Emily Bronte¨’s poems appeared to reduce their significance for many readers, confining them within a self-indulgent childhood fantasy world.’’ Poetry that cannot be detached from Gondal is routinely dismissed as rubbish and melodrama. So critics have ‘‘felt the need to clearly divide Emily’s poetry into Gondal and non-Gondal categories, and so rescue some of the poems as personal romantic statements.’’ The criteria for division would seem to be between good and meaningful poetry, and poetry that is related to the juvenile (in the more pejorative sense) world of Gondal. The problem with this division is that many of Emily’s poems acknowledged as her best work are clearly set in Gondal. For instance, Emily’s published poem ‘‘The Prisoner’’ is a fragment from the long poem ‘‘Julian M. and A. G. Rochelle’’ in the Gondal notebook. Critics who try to downplay the importance of Gondal explain this phenomenon with the claim that removing lyric poetry from its specific context in Gondal to an unbounded universal context magically transforms the same lines into more deeply meaningful poetry. It must be noted that the one responsible for this transformation was not Emily herself, but Charlotte, who acted as her editor. At least part of what explains such seemingly paradoxical criticism is a long-standing academic prejudice against fantasy as a literary theme. This is the same prejudice that prevented the Bronte¨s from ever considering publication of Angria or Gondal material. The same consideration hampered J. R. R. Tolkien in his initial attempts to publish works set in his fantasy realm of Middle Earth. Most critics still wish to dismiss Tolkien, just as they dismiss Gondal, despite the overwhelming
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popularity of fantasy literature once it became available in commercially published literature. Tom Shippey, in his J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, has made the case that fantasy has become the dominant genre of English literature over the course of the twentieth century, with academic critics fighting against it vigorously. Fantasy suffers from the prejudice that it is unreal and devoted to infantile wish fulfillment, despite the evident fact that even the most realistic novels of Marcel Proust or Ernest Hemingway are set in a carefully constructed artificial world just as much as Middle Earth or Gondal. A more persuasive solution to the problem of Gondal is to see Bronte¨ as a forward-looking author whose instinct was to anticipate the rise of fantasy. Emily and her siblings can be seen as the first great world builders, anticipating the modern explosion of the exploration of fantasy worlds as a new popular genre. The exploration of the human condition through such a manipulation of authorial reality hardly reduces the meaning of the Bronte¨s’ poetry, since its meaning remains the same whatever its context. The creation of a fantastic world as the setting of a work of literature is hardly new with the Bronte¨s. Rather, they found inspiration in the ancient epic poets Homer and Virgil, and in English epics such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. What they added to tradition, through their imitation of contemporary popular magazines that gave form to their efforts, was the modern and even postmodern characteristics of play with genre and ironic distancing of the author and reader from the text. Their awareness of the interplay between artistic creation and commercial publication marks their fantasy world as a place of sophisticated literature, possessed of all the serious literary characteristics critics declare lacking in fantasy. To turn more directly to ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ it is not hard to see how it must have functioned within the Gondal Saga in general, and to make some educated guesses about the specifics. There seems to be little doubt that Emily was acquainted with the writings of the first-century Stoic philosopher Epictetus and that her presentation of Stoicism within the poem is closely based on his works. Epictetus is by far the most accessible surviving source for Stoic philosophy, and all the more so in the nineteenth century for a reader unacquainted with the ancient Greek original since his works were widely translated. In
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particular, the translation by Elizabeth Carter in All the Works of Epictetus, which are now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments was most likely well known to Emily since she was unusually highly educated for a woman of her time, and she also trained and worked as a professional teacher, however briefly. The closest that one can come to confirmation of this is a saying from the Handbook of Epictetus that deals in a unified way with precisely the same subject matter as Bronte¨’s poem: the rejection of wealth, love, and fame in a context of Stoic conceptions about salvation. Epictetus imagines a banquet in which all the apparently goods things of life are offered. The proper way to act, he says, is to take each plate as it is passed to you, and not to reach out for it before it comes to you, and not to keep it when it is to be passed on to someone else: In the same way toward your children, in the same way toward your wife, in the same way toward public office, in the same way toward wealth, and you will be fit to share a banquet with the gods.
But if you can reject even what is offered to you and partake of nothing, then you will have passed from the companionship of the banquet to join the company of the gods, acting as they themselves do and surpassing the merely human. This is the ultimate goal of Stoic philosophy. In both Bronte¨ and Epictetus, by not only not desiring but by actively rejecting the value of worldly goods, the Stoic proves himself worthy of divine status, though Bronte¨ seems to push this off to an afterlife in the conflation of Stoic and Christian ideas fashionable in the nineteenth century. Many modern readers take the old Stoic of the title to be Epictetus, as though the ancient philosopher were the speaker of the poem. This is a universalist reading of the poem, meant to make it accessible to readers with no special knowledge of the Bronte¨s’ created world, that moves it away from Gondal where Epictetus would not be a possible character. However, the title ‘‘The Old Stoic’’ was given to the poem by Charlotte, not Emily, and can, therefore, hardly be used as evidence for a reading of Emily’s intended meaning. The poem is more likely meant to be a sketch of an unidentified character within the Gondal Saga. There is ample precedent for the development of such a character. For instance in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar the character of Brutus has little relation to Caesar’s historical friend and assassin Brutus, but
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rather is a fictionalized character who consistently acts and speaks as a Stoic philosopher would in the situations presented by the plot of the play. Bronte¨ very likely intended something of the same kind. Thinking along these lines, there is no warrant to accept Charlotte’s characterization of the Stoic as old. It is true he speaks of death as swiftly approaching, but this is not most naturally taken as a reference to old age but as a Stoic commonplace. The Stoic viewed death as the only certainty in life and lived ever mindful of it. Even if Emily’s Stoic has some definite reason to think he might die soon, there is no reason to think this death would come from old age. Ancient Stoic philosophers were famous for speaking out against political tyranny and oppression, even at the cost of their own lives when the tyrant silenced them through execution. A scene along those lines would offer far more dramatic potential within the Gondal Saga than a mere death from old age. Here is an instance when the original context of Gondal, even if it must be recreated, gives more depth of meaning to the poem, in contrast to the shallowness implicit in the Universalist reading, which would make the poem merely a restatement of Epictetus’s own philosophy in old age. Source: Bradley A. Skeen, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Maggie Allen In the following essay, Allen shows the influence of German romantic poets in Bronte¨’s poetry. The comment by Mrs Gaskell that ‘anyone passing by the kitchen door might have seen [Emily] studying German out of an open book’, suggests an influence on Emily Bronte¨ by the German Romantic poets. The great influx of German literature coming into England in the early decades of the nineteenth century brought with it the work of Goethe, Schiller, Tieck, and Novalis, followed later by Eichendorff and Brentano, among others. Their work was frequently published in Blackwood’s and Fraser’s literary magazines, and they found support from Thomas Carlyle, Madame de Stae¨l, Sir Walter Scott, and the poets Shelley and Byron. One factor often mentioned in the popular rise of German literature in England is Madame de Stae¨l’s book, De L’Allemagne, published in London in 1813. This was ‘[. . .] a great success and sold out completely in three days’. The book revealed the Germans to be ‘civilised by Christianity and their
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THE POEMS OF EMILY ARE PASSIONATE AND SINCERE. HER SOLITARY WALKS ON THE MOORS ALLOWED HER TO BE A ROMANTIC WANDERER, TO BE AT ONE WITH NATURE AND SHARE ITS SECRETS. HER POEMS REPRESENT THE CHANGING FACES OF NATURE, ITS EXTREMES AND COMPLEXITIES.’’
history is that of the middle-ages, Gothic rather than classical’. The Gothic ingredient found its way into art, architecture, and many facets of English life, but was prominent in literature. ‘Gothic’ displayed a darker side of Romanticism, whereby writers and poets explored death, often in a nightmare setting. The desolate landscape and atmosphere were all encapsulated into a world of shadows. Even the Gondal poems do not escape the European Romantic and German Gothic influences: Emily’s powerful women offer female versions of the Romantic exile, that outcast, outlawed, or otherwise isolated figure, the lonely bearer of the truth who rejects or rebels against the society from which she has been exiled.
A good example of ‘Gothic’ is Emily’s poem, ‘‘The Prisoner’’ (1845), where the only escape is death, with its ‘dungeon crypts [. . .] year after year in gloom and desolate despair [. . .] the vision is divine’. The poem contains the mystical experience with its loss of consciousness and the descent of peace bringing with it the divine vision, ‘then dawns the invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals’. The influence of Novalis (1772–1801) and his mystical vision can be seen in the poetry of Emily Bronte¨ where consciousness attempts to transcend reality through nature, aiming for that close union with God, freedom, and immortality. The night and yearning for death are familiar themes running through the poetry of both Novalis and Emily Bronte¨, along with that curious ‘visionary’ aspect that both poets adopt, which is uncanny; revelations, and visions accompanied by feelings of ecstasy and joy, in
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an individual and personal response for their own particular need. ‘‘The Visionary’’ poem by Emily Bronte¨ has its analogue with Novalis’s Hymns to the Night with its silence and isolation of the poet who awaits the divine vision, accepting that her transcendental powers are ‘its guiding star’. Both poets use the silence of the night in which to perceive the spirit world. For both Novalis and Emily Bronte¨ the night brings peace and happiness, as they gaze into the immortal realm. Hymns to the Night could be described as poems of meditation or reflection on death. They use images of the night to seek the spiritual world, and, like Emily Bronte¨, the quest for eternity is a powerful force. Novalis states that the night makes us aware of ourselves and nature as one, ‘More heavenly than those glittering stars we hold eternal eyes which the Night hath opened within us’, compared with Emily Bronte¨’s ‘‘Stars’’, ‘And hide me from the hostile light (daylight) / That does not warm but burn’. The poems of Novalis and Emily Bronte¨ are unique for their visionary qualities, but also because they were written at a time when Romanticism gave them the opportunity to develop their innate powers. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) captured the essence of man’s role in nature when he declared, ‘If I work on unceasingly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of being when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit’, which echoes the beliefs of Novalis. Goethe captured the essence of man’s role in nature in his musical poetry, with its addition of Gothic machinery in such poems as ‘‘ King of the Elves’’ (Erlko¨nig), and ‘‘Welcome and Farewell’’ (‘‘Willkommen und Abschied’’) which has formative links with Emily Bronte¨’s Gondal poems, and their high emotional and musical rhythms. Goethe’s poem ‘‘Night Thoughts’’ has its affinity also with Novalis and Emily Bronte¨. The poet speaks to the stars as they ‘shone in splendour’, and the ‘sojournless eternal hours [that] lead you’, which can be compared with Emily Bronte¨’s ‘‘Stars’’ which have ‘glorious eyes’ and provide a divine vision, ‘I saw him blazing still’, while for Novalis the stars were ‘making | Signal with voices sweet’. Friedrich von Schiller, the German Romantic poet and writer, a volume of whose collected works was to be found on the Bronte¨ bookshelves alongside Deutsches Lesebuch or Lessons in German
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Literature (London: Duval & Co., 1837) and Rabenhorst’s Pocket Dictionary of the German and English Language (London: Longman, Brown & Co., 1843), was frequently to be featured in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and was a close friend of Goethe. Together they were the recognized leaders of the German Romantic movement. Schiller produced many ballad-style poems, as well as experimenting with ‘fragment’ poetry, a feature of the Romantic movement. Similar fragments can be seen in the poetry of Emily Bronte¨, which have been thought to be a part of other poems, or, merely drafts, but arguably the German Romantic influence can be seen at work, ‘What is that smoke that ever still | Comes rolling down that dark brown hill’, capturing the mist descending on the moors. But it was Brussels that was to change the isolated life of Emily Bronte¨. It was a period of her life that ‘had been overlooked by too many students’, according to Robert K. Wallace. Emily discovered ‘a world of cathedrals and pictures [and] learned to read the masters of French and German literature, all of which led her to producing some of the best work of her life’, indicating that her foreign experience was to provide a turning point in her life. Wallace concludes that, [. . .] to Beethoven himself it was obvious that music and literature could inhabit the same emotional, spiritual and stylistic realms. In 1823 he declared that his musical ideas are roused by moods which in the poet’s case are transmuted into words, and mine into tones, that sound, roar and storm until at last they take shape for me as notes.
Wallace finds many similarities between Beethoven and Emily Bronte¨ as nature provided the inspiration for both in their expression of the Romantic style. Beethoven would have strengthened Emily’s links with European culture, and served as a role model on which to base her writing, with music providing a very powerful and emotional language indeed. Philip Barford, in his study of Beethoven’s late piano sonatas, turned to Emily Bronte¨’s poem, ‘‘The Prisoner,’’ for a parallel to the spiritual vision expressed by the sublime variations movement that concludes Beethoven’s Opus 109. The poem is suggestive of the mystical experience, since it is dramatic in its quest for ecstasy and emotional response. Wallace states that it is no surprise that Beethoven’s music was especially taken up by Emily as, ‘her assimilation of his music and his legend in
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the 1840s sets in a new light the time lag between the Romantic equilibrium he achieved at the beginning of the Romantic age in music and she achieved near the end of the Romantic age in literature’. The German Romantic writers relied upon music as a necessary ingredient of their poetry, and even Goethe has a love—hate relationship with Beethoven, although each admired the talent of the other. Beethoven composed several pieces of music based on Goethe’s texts. The poetry of Tieck is also full of musical effects, combining assonance, rhyme and rhythm to evoke the sounds and moods of music. According to James Hardin, ‘who else could have conversed with Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner [ . . . ]’. The poetry of Tieck, with its verbal music was later to influence the German poets Heine and Eichendorff. The poems of Emily are passionate and sincere. Her solitary walks on the moors allowed her to be a Romantic wanderer, to be at one with nature and share its secrets. Her poems represent the changing faces of nature, its extremes and complexities. Here she could meditate on her own emotional instincts. She shares this with the German Romantic poets, particularly Eichendorff, whose portrayal of the natural world is reminiscent of Emily Bronte¨’s with its aesthetic landscapes, colourful images, and the wandering poet—that ever-Romantic figure who appears in her poems. The poem ‘‘Moonlit Night’’ by Eichendorff, with its nocturnal, symbolic landscape, ‘so starry-clear was the night’, has a religious significance; nature is of divine origin which echoes nearness to, and distance from, God, as ‘my soul spread/Its wings out wide’, and ‘flew through the silent regions’. The ‘silent regions’ suggest a past the poet wishes to leave behind—the flawed world of mankind—in order to reach eternity, the fulfilment of Romanticism. Poetry shows the relationship between the poets and the discourse of the age. The German Romantic movement was firmly established in Britain at the time Emily Bronte¨ was writing and, despite the differences in country and culture, the poetry of the German Romantics does have an affinity with that of Emily Bronte¨. There are strong similarities of interest between Emily and poets such as Goethe and Novalis, nature and Gothic, for example, and their imaginative and spiritual vision. The influence of Beethoven on the German Romantic poets and Emily is
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also strong. In conclusion, while no single definitive factor links Emily Bronte¨ directly to the German poets, the German influence was clearly present. Source: Maggie Allen, ‘‘Emily Bronte¨ and the Influence of the German Romantic Poets,’’ in Bronte¨ Studies: The Journal of the Bronte¨ Society, Vol. 30, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 7–10.
Edward Wagenknecht In the following excerpt, Wagenknecht examines the Gondalan theme used by Bronte¨ in a biography and book of poetry. Angria was an African kingdom; in the early days all the Bronte¨ children lived there. But when Charlotte went to Roe Head, Emily found it impossible to work comfortably with Branwell; she and Anne therefore withdrew from Angria and betook themselves to Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. The prose histories of Gondal have not survived, though Miss Ratchford has been able to recover broad outlines by reference to Emily’s poems, most, if not all, of which used the same materials. This is the psychological moment, then, for the new and definitive edition of Emily’s poems which Mr. Hatfield has just given us, the first that has ever been prepared from Emily’s own manuscripts, and which thus definitely supersedes all the earlier texts with their many inaccuracies. Variant readings have been indicated with scrupulous care, the history of the manuscripts is given, the poems themselves are arranged in the order in which they fall in the history of Gondal, and an elaborate series of keys makes it possible for the careful reader to think Mr. Hatfield’s thoughts after him. There are still many lacunae in our knowledge of Gondal, however, and neither Mr. Hatfield nor Miss Ratchford has feared to indicate these frankly. Taken together, these two new volumes of Bronte¨ana deal the popular view that literature is necessarily autobiography the heaviest blow it has sustained in many a year. If ever any writers were noted for their subjectivity, the Bronte¨s have been so noted. And if ever any writers have provided a favorite hunting-ground for Freudian quackery, it has been they. Yet now it is absolutely proved that all the principal matters they are supposed to have derived from personal experience had actually been described by them in another form before the experiences in question took place! This is not a matter of conjecture; we have documentary evidence on the table. Unless
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we are now willing to admit that imagination is a part of experience—‘‘An imaginative experience,’’ says Walter de la Mare, ‘‘is not only as real but far realer than an unimaginative one’’—it is going to be pretty difficult to digest the new data. Of course this does not mean that it is necessary to go to fantastic extremes in the other direction and to deny the connection of literature and life altogether. And of course we must grant that it is possible for a writer to use an imaginatively conceived experience and to color it with what has happened personally to her. But none of this will help the Freudians very much. Source: Edward Wagenknecht, Review of The Bronte¨s’ Web of Childhood/The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte¨, in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 1942, pp. 139–42.
Augustus Ralli In the following essay, Ralli discusses how Emily Bronte¨’s personality is incongruous with the work she created. Emily Bronte¨ is among the great ones whom it is said that we do not know, and the curiosity that seeks to know more of a writer than his works reveal has been condemned as unworthy. We are told that since he has expressed his mind, and so given his best to the world, we should not hunt after mere personal details. That this objection sounds more plausible than it is, and the modern instinct to make biography intimate is not a mistaken one, is the task here set before us to prove. Let us realize in the beginning that art is a social virtue, that the ultimate reward of all success is social success, and that man is incomplete till he has expressed not only his mind but his personality. The supreme fact of life is personality, and its expression can be attained only by contact with men and women. To win battles, sway senates, discover new lands, write immortal verse: beyond all these, beyond even the mind’s satisfaction in exercising its powers, is the approval of such as have done like things, is admission sought and won into the Paradise of this world— the kind glances of fair women and brave men. Disraeli’s social success pleased him as much as his political, and there have been great men without personal magnetism, such as the American General Grant, or Jenner of vaccination fame. An aristocracy of pure intellect will never possess the earth, and the unkempt man of genius no longer excites admiring wonder. While man inhabits the earth he consists of body as well as
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THE TRAGEDY OF CHARLOTTE’S LIFE WAS ENFORCED SOLITUDE; WHEREAS EMILY, IF SHE EVER HAD WORLDLY DESIRES—AND WE GATHER FROM HER POEMS THAT SHE HAD—CONQUERED THEM ONCE AND FOR ALL.’’
mind; the ascetic ideal that despises the body as a clog to the spirit is rejected; and the modern culture of the body implies that it is a means of expressing the soul. Did not Leonardo da Vinci say that one of the two most wonderful sights in the world was the smiling of women? Plato commended the spoken above the written word, because its meaning is strengthened by change of voice, glance of eye, movement of hand; and we need only revolve in our thoughts a few homely instances to be assured how vain it is to dispart mind and body. A letter cannot compensate for an absent friend, and a bore is a person whose utterances may be foretold. A twice-told tale will weary, and words that passed almost unnoticed may return and rankle in solitude, and again dissolve like a dream when the speaker is beheld once more in the flesh. A child prefers a story told rather than read from a book, and the very word ‘‘lecture’’ is evilly associated. Gloom envelops a company when a person adopts the lecturer’s tone, speaking in a manner once removed from the personalities of his hearers, solving the problem by the help of ready made wisdom instead of that generated by the immediate contact of minds. A great orator creates the illusion in each member of his audience that he is spoken to directly; and a letter writer of genius never loses contact with his correspendent, whether his theme be objective or subjective; whether it be Cowper analyzing his religious melancholy, or Horace Walpole describing the Gordon riots. The conclusion is that mind and body express each other, and we do not know our fellow creatures by one alone. Because of the few surviving details of his life we do not know Shakespeare, though through the mouths of his characters we have his thoughts on every subject in the world
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and beyond. Much of the cloud of darkness surrounding Chatham has been dispelled by the discovery of his latest biographer, Mr. Basil Williams, that he was exceptionally grateful for acts of personal kindness. Modern critics like Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. J. Middleton Murry affirm that every mental process has its equivalent in the world of sense; indeed Mr. Eliot says that Hamlet remains obscure because Shakespeare failed to find something in the outer world corresponding to the hero’s disgust at his mother’s conduct. It pleases us to think that the essence of the immortal biography is contained in Dr. Johnson’s stentorian call to his servant Frank for a clean shirt, when Boswell had pleaded successfully with Mrs. Williams and the road to the Wilkes dinner party lay open. The lack of objective correlatives places Emily Bronte¨ among the unknown. Yet the task must not be abandoned, even if we make only the slight advance of realizing more fully the difficulties that beset us. If personality is the force proceeding from united soul and body made objective by the difficulties which stay it or which it overcomes, we can learn something by inquiring into the nature of the difficulties. We think of Cowper succumbing in his struggle with the wish to believe; FitzGerald self-banished from a world he found too hard; Swift finally baffled in his desire for power and place and retiring to die like a poisoned rat in a hole—to use his own phrase; Charlotte Bronte¨ vainly seeking love as a refuge from hypochondria: and in consequence we know much of all these. Then we turn to Gibbon or Wordsworth, both of whom realized their personalities objectively—the one in his history, the other in contemplating nature and giving to his thoughts enduring form. Again, we have a middle class such as Byron and Carlyle, who achieved great fame but remained miserable— the one because of his lost social reputation, the other through imperfect faith and despair at the condition of the world. With Emily Bronte¨ there is a break between the operations of her mind as her books reveal it and the few biographical facts that have come down to us. We know that she was the least accessible of the three sisters of genius in the remote Haworth parsonage. She refused all acquaintance beyond her family, and yet was passionately interested in the fortunes of the people about her. As Charlotte says: ‘‘She knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she
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could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them she rarely enchanged a word.’’ At school in Brussels she spoke to no one, and although, with Charlotte, she spent her weekly holiday at the house of an English family, she remained throughout impenetrable to friendly advances. Heger remarked upon her capacity for argument, unusual in a man and rare indeed in a woman; adding that hers was a stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes or her own sense of right were concerned. Mrs. Gaskell described her as reserved in the least favorable sense of the word; that is, indifferent if she pleased or not. When she went as pupil to Roe Head and teacher to a school near Halifax, she succumbed to homesickness, and her year’s absence in Brussels was nearly cut short for the same reason. She loved liberty, she enjoyed passionately the lonely moors, and she loved wild animals because they were wild. Even in the small home circle she had a preference, and we doubt if she responded fully to the affection Charlotte lavished upon her. Charlotte described her as intractable, and observed that to advocate one side of a cause would ensure her adoption of the opposite. She began to write poetry without confiding in Charlotte, and was not pleased by Charlotte’s chance discovery of her manuscripts. Perhaps her sister Anne, with a lesser mind, had a more receptive nature, and made a better companion to a woman of genius. To the end of Emily’s short life the two played the game of make-believe which they called the Gondal Chronicles. No summary of facts should omit such harrowing details of her death scene as the silence she opposed to questions as to her state, and her refusal until too late to allow a ‘‘poisoning doctor’’ to come near her. With every wish to estimate Emily favorably, it is hard to do so with the foregoing facts in mind. Exclusive family affection is not a commending trait, and one who persistently declines friendly advances is apt to forfeit human sympathy. In her last illness, had she no thought for the moral sufferings of her sisters when she refused to answer questions or see a doctor? And yet it is only fair to recall Charlotte’s saying that she was full of ruth for others though without pity on herself. If we turn from Charlotte’s direct sayings to her fictitious and therefore suggestive ones, we are equally baffled. Shirley Keeldar was supposed to represent Emily in happier circumstances, and yet, while external things such as the rich dresses
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she wore are much dwelt upon, we are not helped in the ultimate object of our search—a human soul made more beautiful on earth by the body. There is enough to stimulate but not satisfy the imagination. We can picture the pleased expression on her face in solitude when anticipating her sisters’ home-coming, the smile with which she greeted them, the especial look she reserved for Anne when they found themselves alone. On the reverse side we can picture the despair in her eyes when one after another came the harsh reviews of Wuthering Heights. But still we lack the actual collision of soul and sense with the outer world to make the vision real. Life is greater than art, the artist’s mind surpasses his work, and the crowd of men, indifferent to art, never desist to seek God in their fellow creatures, though they may know it not. The example of Emily Bronte¨ suggests two problems especially prominent at the present day: personality and hero-worship. Carlyle taught us that hero-worship is the adamant below which unbelief cannot fall; and that if you convince a man he is in the presence of a higher soul his knees are automatically loosened in reverence. Lately Marcel Proust remarked that some people think of society as an Indian caste in which you take your place as you are born, but in reality all is due to personality: the humblest can become the friend of princes, and there are many princes whose acquaintance no one desires. Carlyle preached the doctrine of work; he predicted a commonwealth of workers, and advised the man who had no work to hide himself; yet he privately admitted true good breeding to be one of the finest things in the world, and remarked the care of well-bred persons to avoid all unpleasant topics in conversation. The two are contradictory, for the effect of strenuous work— other than artistic—is to materialize, and good breeding can only thrive in the soil of leisure. The kind of character developed by the Victorian professional and business man is an answer to those who plead the dignity of work; and the modern desire for education in late life is an attempt to restore the balance of the mind which every profession inevitably disturbs. The duty of work is to overcome difficulties; the powers which it develops are the combative or competitive; whereas the right use of leisure is to promote the growth of the soul—and the greatest soul is that which has the greatest power to love. Good breeding implies that the material struggle has been concluded
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generations back, that there is no need to compete with others for means of living and so acquire the habit of preferring things to persons. That a leisured class by attaining a certain mental outlook becomes the symbol of a more perfect life, alone justifies its existence in our distracted modern world, and makes the sight of luxury side by side with poverty at all bearable; and the toiling millions still feel an instinctive respect for those who dress finely and bear themselves graciously and do no work, despite the Communist orator. That leisure and accumulated wealth are daily put to the worst uses is a truth we will not stay to consider in our search for the conditions in which personality may develop. Something has been said of good breeding, but as the highest beauty lies in expression, and the world soon tires of perfect features that lack it, so the longsolved material struggle does but prepare the ground by eliminating gross desires. We return to Proust’s saying, and also remember that Becky Sharp climbed the social ladder to be ultimately bored. The soul uses the refined body to suggest a higher beauty; for man seeks God in his fellow creatures, and it was a doctrine of the neo-Platonists that a beautiful person could not be wicked. Hence are those stories eternally fascinating which tell how gods or angels have come down to live with men. Thus the world labors to produce a race intermediate between God and man: the body on which generations of leisure have worked as with a chisel, the feelings—when not blasted by pride—responding to the sorrows of the lowest, the mind touched by those arts and philosophies which add thought to beauty. And to become a member of this race is the crown of all earthly effort, including art. Keats and Shelley were two of the most intense lyricists of all time, yet each laid aside his art before the close of his troubled life because the world would not listen. Surely this tribute of art to life proves that man’s deepest desire is to be approved by man. And what exists scattered in the mass of men is brought to a focus in this selected intermediary race. Each carries with him the memory of a human friend transfigured, and all moral codes and material considerations shrink to nothing by contrast with the immediate presence of man. He may be thought insincere, for he neither argues nor contradicts, never speaks a distasteful truth, promises what he cannot perform, and will discard a friend for an unlucky word. Yet through
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this over-value of mankind we see dimly on the outer edge of society something of heaven on earth, of the reign of love. But always the law holds good that heaven reveals itself through the earthly beauty of line and color: and so we end where we began with Leonardo’s saying of the smiling of women. To the opinions of Carlyle and Proust which have been the props of this argument we now add a third. Professor Bradley described the tragic hero as intense rather than extraordinary—as one who thought and acted in a manner little removed from the average person but more energetically. We admire Antony and Cleopatra, for instance, and contemn the politic Octavius and his impeccable sister. The modern craving for personality has displaced the balance too far from mere good breeding to the region of despotic will and tempestuous passion. Never has the lot of undistinguished people been harder, nor the bore more severely let alone. In old days the human race was united by the subconscious thought of the brotherhood of man; but now, in our eagerness to see the vision before the coming of night, we apply widely the mordant remark of Charles Maurras against literary egoists, that not everybody has a soul. Having rejected the theory that an author’s work is his best biography, but convinced that the writer of a great book has a great soul, and that to learn how this soul moved among us in its earthly vestments is to learn something of heaven, we pass on to glean what we can from Emily’s books. And they also strike us, as did her life, by other-worldliness, by excess of soul over body. She has been called primitive, a descendent of giants and Titans, and so on, but this is not the emotion that Wuthering Heights conveys; she is on the hither side of civilization, not before it begins but where it ends, and what Carlyle called the dim waste that lies beyond creation appears. The wild scenery of Wuthering Heights, the lonely moors impassable in winter, the stony track that leads off the main road to the deserted farm, where the slant of the stunted firs and thorns shows the force of the north wind, the rude furniture of the dwelling, the hard manners of its inmates—all point to something far withdrawn from the world we know. We are on the pinnacles of the moral world, with its restraints and conventions out of sight; the scene is laid in a spot that has not changed since creation, and that symbolizes the end of civilization; and there is
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nothing primitive in the souls of those who act out their destinies in these abandoned tracts. As we approach the stern tale, something of at least the outlying parts of Emily’s mind will be revealed. As common traits of the characters we may cite intellectual vigor and sarcastic speech, such as we might expect to find in the Yorkshire farmer or land-worker, out of whom Heathcliff was idealized: the effect of a keen brain and little education, solitude, hard weather, rough work. When old Mr. Earnshaw dies late at night, the messenger dispatched for the doctor and parson returns with the doctor and says the parson will come in the morning. Heathcliff says sneeringly that Isabella Linton married him thinking he was a hero of romance, and at first none of his brutalities disgusted her. ‘‘I suppose we shall have plenty of lamentations now!’’ exclaims Catherine when Edgar at last realizes the mortal nature of her illness. Catherine again is under no illusions as regards her lover; she warns the infatuated Isabella that Heathcliff is a pitiless, wolfish man, not the kind who conceals depths of benevolence beneath a stern exterior. The above saying of Heathcliff leads to a further common trait of Emily’s characters: their self-consciousness. Catherine speaks of turning her fits of frenzy to account; Linton Heathcliff admits he has a bad nature and cannot be scorned enough, and is too mean for the younger Catherine’s anger; and many other instances spring to the mind. It is the trait which makes Shakespeare’s characters psychologically real and individual: from Richard III, where it shows rather crudely, to the most consummate examples of his genius: Hamlet, Iago, Falstaff. Like Shakespeare, Scott, Jane Austen, like all the most creative artists, Emily’s characters become objective and self-moved; the one point of contact with her personal nature is sarcasm. But it is a sarcasm bound up with intellectual vigor: the power to foresee clearly, while others, blinded by mere wishes, are dimly groping after truth. Keen untutored brains struggling with hard conditions might foster its growth in her models, but with Emily the cause was excess of spirit reacting on her own powerful mind, making this earth too small a point to see realized the thoughts she drew from the infinite. The note of Charlotte’s writings is regret; Charlotte would have been happy in a full family life, in society, in contact with any persons who treated her kindly. The tragedy of Charlotte’s life was enforced solitude; whereas Emily, if she
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ever had worldly desires—and we gather from her poems that she had—conquered them once and for all. No doubt she grieved deeply at the immediate failure of Wuthering Heights, and she resigned further literary work, yet the fact remains that the balance is shifted too heavily on the side of soul for us to see her as a glorious earthly figure.
the ice-cold hand which seizes the dreamer’s; the sobbing voice, ‘‘Let me in . . . I’m come home. I’d lost my way on the moor;’’ the child’s face looking through the window; the reiterated cry, ‘‘It is twenty years . . . I’ve been a wait for twenty years;’’ the effect on Heathcliff of sliding back the panels. . . .
Charlotte describes nature as one who loves the joys of this world; the beauty of her landscapes in dawn or sunset is heightened by the suggestion from her own mind that another day has passed, and her hopes are unrealized, and death will come. Also, the love that she describes, though transcending time and space, is not entirely strange to earth. Most of us when first reading Jane Eyre in childhood knew that we were falsely told in the concluding chapter that Jane married Rochester; we felt instinctively that the inner truth of the story was thereby violated, that the poor human institution of marriage was a small thing to two such souls wandering in eternity. And yet for a short spell they might have been happy on earth: Jane Eyre and Rochester at Thornhill, Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel in the schoolrooms of Villette. It is otherwise with Catherine and Heathcliff who, as children on the moors, had just a foothold in time, but cannot be imagined living together as man and wife even in the extra-conventional world of the story. But if their love is not of earth still less is it of heaven, and we must search for the true region where their souls have scope.
What are the symbols that Emily uses so skilfully as to make us believe that this onceremoved world exists? In the first place we have the rude setting of the story, the point in life where all joyful social intercourse has ceased, and human relations are just preserved. It is neither primitive nor return to barbarism, but the end of a world, the dropping one by one of the refinements of life till the soul is naked. The austere moors, the bare dwellings typify it; the coming of a stranger brings it home to us, like one of Shakespeare’s underplots which reflect the main action and add a meaning. Such was Hindley Earnshaw’s wife who came from no one knew where, without name or fortune, the ‘‘rush of a lass’’ far advanced in consumption, but who was so delighted with the old farm house that she would have nothing changed for her comfort, whose gay heart never failed her till within a week of her death. Catherine said well that she had no more right to marry Edgar Linton than to go to heaven, and her dream taught her how miserable she would have been in heaven. The Linton family does seem an alien presence on the moors, and the interior of Thrushcross Grange, into which Catherine and Heathcliff gaze spell-bound, with its crimson carpet and crimson-covered chairs and white and gold ceiling, so remote as almost to be unreal. Here again we see Emily’s soul stronger than that of Charlotte, who described such things with a tinge of regret that she too did not live in splendid places and wear rich fabrics. Heathcliff’s brutality is neither that of the savage, the boor, nor the over-civilized man driven mad. When he strikes the younger Catherine he does the easiest thing to gain his object, because nothing else is worthwhile in a perishing world. The manner of his death typifies this world from which life is visibly receding.
Many writers have attempted to depict a world beyond this, and none have succeeded like Emily. Haeckel, in the midst of foolish generalizations, did arrest our thought when he asked if we realized what we meant by eternity, and pointed to the profound legend of the Wandering Jew. Yet the desire to persist at least beyond this world is ineradicable, and Emily speaks in accents that convince us a further sphere exists. It comes to us in Mr. Lockwood’s dream, and not Clarence’s dream in Richard III, not the witches in Macbeth, not the raising of Samuel by the Witch of Endor, have so true a ring of an actual experience of the soul. The keynote of the dream is subtly struck when sour old Joseph tells the younger Catherine that she will never mend her ways but go right to the devil like her mother before her. It is followed by the discovery of the writing in the old book which affects us strangely because we know that the writer has passed behind the veil. Then comes the dream: the tapping of the branch on the lattice;
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But if the soul is thus stripped naked, all the more urgent is its craving for love. It has attained the extreme point of earth, it reaches forward into the abyss beyond, it even exchanges messages with those whom the abyss has swallowed, and always it cries for love. Because of this we feel that the new world, a corner of which is mysteriously
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revealed, is more good than evil. That much evil remains—above all the sense of sin for earthly deeds—we do not dispute, but that love continues and will eventually triumph over sin, is the last conviction. Catherine’s unrestrained childhood, the passionate dispositions of the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff’s rough caresses which bruise the arm of his dying love—all these are symbols of the ultimate recovery of the spirit. Edgar Linton finds comfort in books after his wife’s death, Hindley Earnshaw, in the same condition, becomes a gambler and raving drunkard. Because the soul is a real thing its conflict with gross matter is terrible: such was Hindley’s unreasoning persecution of Heathcliff as a boy. While on earth it may appear worsted in its conflict with evil, but Emily has power to convince that the decision is elsewhere. The device of the Greek chorus has been a favorite one with playwright or novelist; it here finds an unparalleled exponent in the character of Nelly Dean. Catherine confides her spiritual affinity with Heathcliff to be met with the retort: ‘‘If I can make any sense of your nonsense, Miss—.’’ As with Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, or Apemantus in Timon, her very blindness to the wonderland of Catherine’s soul must flash something of its glory upon the dullest reader. Turning from her novel to ask whether her poems will supply the image of an earthlyheavenly creature, again the answer is negative. The balance may be shifted a stage back towards earth, but is still not equal. One cannot but hear the cry of the heart in ‘‘Remembrance,’’ but there is no means of knowing the proportion of real and ideal. Let us however recall a few of her best pieces and brood over their distinctive charm. Such are ‘‘The Linnet,’’‘‘The Prisoner,’’‘‘The Lady to Her Guitar,’’‘‘How Clear She Shines,’’‘‘Often Rebuked,’’‘‘The Outcast Mother,’’‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ and the poem already mentioned. Take the last stanza of ‘‘The Linnet’’: Blow, west wind, by the lonely mound, And murmur, summer streams— There is no need of other sound To soothe my lady’s dreams. And this from ‘‘The Lady to Her Guitar’’: It is as if the glassy brook Should image still its willows fair, Though years ago the woodman’s stroke Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair. And place beside them these lines from Wordsworth’s ‘‘Highland Reaper:’’
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A voice more thrilling ne’er was heard In springtime from the cuckoo bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the furthest Hebrides. And this stanza of Mr. De La Mare’s, the effect of snow on fields at break of day: It hangs the frozen bough With flowers on which the night Wheeling her darkness through Scatters a starry light. Differ as may the poet of fairy-land from the poet who, beginning with the beauty of nature, thereafter includes man, and so rises to believe in a divinely ordered universe, they are one in this: their vision of beauty has brought them peace on earth. It is not so with Emily who, though rivalling them in beauty, is at peace only with nature and not with man. The greatest poets carry with them an ideal world which is proof against intruders: thus William Blake, greater of course as mystic than poet, met and saluted the Apostle Paul in the Strand. Emily falls short of supreme greatness in that she is muted by a trespasser in her imaginative Eden. The earth must be delivered from man’s presence before she can recognize it as Godlike; she is inspired by night,— especially winter nights, when human activity is suspended for many long hours, or starry nights which suggest remote worlds where perhaps sin is not,—by the barest tracts of the moors where no house can resist the wind, by snow which muffles human footsteps and masks human traces, by time and death which defeat man, and make his mightiest happenings—his battles and empires, his material progress, the voices of orators, even the cry of sufferers—a momentary break in the eternal silence. In this shrinking from her fellow creatures, in their power to shatter her bright world by their mere presence, lay Emily’s weakness. Yet she is stronger than Charlotte, who depended utterly on others, and whose consistent regret for lost happiness sounds in her every page. Had we biographical means to know whether this trait was inborn or developed by circumstances, much of the mystery of her personality would be solved. She confesses in her poems to a fleeting desire for fame, and such a stanza as this from ‘‘Remembrance’’ has an authentic ring: But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
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And even despair was powerless to destroy, Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, Strengthened and fed without the aid of joy. But so have many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, over which the battle between evenly-matched commentators has swayed backward and forward for generations. Suffice it that if from the internal evidence of her novel and poems we have realized more clearly what she was not, some slight advance has been made toward conceiving an image of her personality despite a forcedly agnostic conclusion. Source: Augustus Ralli, ‘‘Emily Bronte¨: The Problem of Personality,’’ in North American Review, Vol. 221, No. 826, March 1925, pp. 495–507.
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Evans, Barbara, and Gareth Lloyd Evans, eds., The Scribner Companion to the Bronte¨s, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982. Ingham, Patricia, The Bronte¨s, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 13–14. Leighton, Angela, ‘‘The Poetry,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Bronte¨s, edited by Heather Glen, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 53–71. Maison, Margaret, ‘‘Emily Bronte¨ and Epictetus,’’ in Notes and Queries, vol. 223, June 1978, pp. 230–31. Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth, The Bronte¨s’ Web of Childhood, Columbia University Press, 1941. ———, Gondal’s Queen, University of Texas Press, 1955. Saunders, Jason L., ed., Greek and Roman Philosophy after Aristotle, Free Press, 1966, pp. 59–150. Shippey, Tom, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, HarperCollins, 2000.
SOURCES Alexander, Christine, and Margaret Smith, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bronte¨s, Oxford University Press, 2003. Bock, Carol, ‘‘‘Our Plays’: The Bronte¨ Juvenilia,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Bronte¨s, edited by Heather Glen, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 34–52. Bronte¨, Emily, ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ in The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1950, edited by Helen Gardner, Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 677. ———, Wuthering Heights, edited by Beth Newman, Broadview Press, 2007. Carter, Elizabeth, trans., All the Works of Epictetus, Which Are Now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments, 3rd ed., J. and F. Rivington, 1758. Dodds, Madeleine Hope, ‘‘Gondaliand,’’ in Modern Language Review, Vol. 18, 1923, pp. 9–21. Epictetus, Handbook of Epictetus, translated by Nicholas P. White, Hackett, 1983.
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FURTHER READING Ge´rin, Winifred, Emily Bronte¨, Oxford University Press, 1971. This is the standard biography of Bronte¨ and the usual initial guide to the study of her life and writings. Gezari, Janet, Last Things: Emily Bronte¨’s Poems, Oxford University Press, 2007. Although Gezari does not deal directly with ‘‘The Old Stoic,’’ she gives a critical treatment to Bronte¨’s badly neglected poetry. Turner, Frank M., The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, Yale University Press, 1981. Turner discusses the role of Greek philosophy in nineteenth-century British culture. Winnifrith, Tom, and Edward Chitham, Charlotte and Emily Bronte¨, Macmillan, 1989. This book gives a brief overview of the entwined literary lives of the two sisters, and to a lesser degree the other two Bronte¨ siblings.
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On My First Son BEN JONSON 1616
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The English author Ben Jonson was one of the most well-respected and popular writers of his day. Best known for dramas such as Every Man in His Humour and Volpone; or The Fox, Jonson also wrote a significant body of sophisticated and intelligent poetry, including his 1616 folio Epigrams. Included in this volume are two of Jonson’s most well-known poems, ‘‘On My First Daughter’’ and ‘‘On My First Son,’’ epitaphs for two of Jonson’s children who died in childhood. Jonson wrote ‘‘On My First Son’’ in 1603, the year King James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne as James I, and the year that the plague made a return visit to England, killing thousands of Londoners, including Jonson’s first son, Benjamin. The short poem is poignant in the grief and sense of loss Jonson expresses. At the same time, however, it is also a statement of Christian consolation; Jonson has faith that his son is in a better place than in the earthly realm. Although first published over 400 years ago, Jonson’s poem is still widely available in many anthologies such as English Renaissance Poetry (1990), edited by John Williams and published by the University of Arkansas Press. Moreover, although Jonson wrote the poem in a very different time and place, the sentiment expressed in ‘‘On My First Son’’ remains just as compelling in the twenty-first century as it did in England in the seventeenth century.
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the number of children born to the couple with some claiming at least two and others claiming at least four. He began his career in the theater about the same time, working as an actor and a playwright, although little is known about his life during this period except that he was associated with Philip Henslow’s theater company. In 1598, Jonson’s first well-known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed. Also in the same year, Jonson killed the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel and was charged with murder. He narrowly escaped execution by claiming he was a member of the clergy, proving this by reading scripture in Latin. Jonson also began writing and publishing poems about 1598. By 1603, Jonson was becoming well-known and enjoying royal patronage from the court of King James I of England. However, in the same year, the plague returned to London, leaving over 30,000 people dead in its wake. Among them was Jonson’s son, Benjamin. In response to this tragedy Jonson wrote the poem ‘‘On My First Son’’ in 1603, a poem that later appeared as Epigram 45 in his 1616 collection Epigrams.
Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, near London, England, a month after his father’s death. Jonson’s father had lost his property under the reign of Queen Mary, and was imprisoned. Jonson’s mother later married a bricklayer.
Jonson presented his first royal masque, The Masque of Blackness, for the queen in 1605. The new dramatic genre included singing and dancing with elaborate costumes and set design, and achieved great popularity among the royal court. Jonson collaborated with the designer and architect Inigo Jones to produce some of the best known and most characteristic of the Jacobean masques. At the same time, Jonson reached the peak of his dramatic achievements, producing Volpone; or The Fox in 1606 and The Alchemist in 1610.
Although poor, Jonson attended St. Martin’s Parish School, and subsequently was a student at Westminster School, studying under William Camden, well-known in his time as an antiquarian. This relationship proved to be an influential one for Jonson, who later commented in one of his poems that everything he knew in the arts could be attributed to Camden.
Jonson received several honors during his lifetime. In 1616, King James I appointed Jonson the first poet laureate of England, awarding him an annual pension in return. While on a walking tour of Scotland, the city of Edinburgh made him an honorary burgess. Later, Oxford University presented him with an honorary Master of Arts degree.
In 1589, Jonson left school to follow his stepfather’s trade. It is likely that although most of the students at Westminster would have continued their education at university, Jonson was unable to do so because of poverty. He apparently did not flourish as a bricklayer, because in the early 1590s, he served in the military in Flanders. In 1594, he married Anne Lewis; authorities disagree about
Jonson’s library was destroyed by fire in 1623, and his dramatic and literary career waned, although a large group of younger poets and writers registered their admiration of Jonson by styling themselves as ‘‘The Sons of Ben.’’ In 1628, Jonson fell ill and never recovered, dying on August 6, 1637. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, where the epitaph on his grave reads ‘‘O rare Ben Jonson.’’
Ben Jonson (The Library of Congress)
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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POEM TEXT Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all father, now! For why Will man lament the state he should envy´? To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage, And, if no other misery, yet age! Rest in soft peace; and, asked, say: Here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry— For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
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POEM SUMMARY ‘‘On My First Son’’ is a poem of twelve lines, written in response to the death of Jonson’s first son, Benjamin, a victim of plague. The poem is written in couplets, with the following rhyme scheme: aabbccddeeff. The poem is also written in regular iambic pentameter. Iambic simply means that an unaccented syllable is followed by an accented one, and pentameter means that there are five such pairs (called feet) of one unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable in each line of the poem. Iambic pentameter can be represented as follows: da DUH da DUH da DUH da DUH da DUH. This is a fairly natural rhythm in English, often used in oratory.
Lines 1–4 In the first two lines of the poem, Jonson addresses his dead son and says goodbye to him. He affirms that this son had great value for him and gave him happiness. Moreover, the name Benjamin, both the name of the writer and the dead child, means ‘‘right hand.’’ Thus, in line one, Jonson is referring to the child’s name indirectly by creating this pun. At the same time, the reference to the right hand also reminds readers that as a writer, Jonson’s right hand would be very important to him. In line 2, Jonson chastises himself for having too many ambitions and wishes for the boy. Jonson has invested himself in his son’s future to the extent that he now believes he was sinful in doing so. While it is admirable to want good things for one’s child, Jonson seems to be saying that he was
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overly involved in thoughts of his son’s future. While modern audiences might not find this sinful, in Jonson’s time, putting the love of any human, even a first son, before the love of God would be considered sinful. In addition, the line adds significant poignancy to the poem. Jonson seems to be saying that his grief is all the greater because he loved his son so much. In line 3, the reader discovers that Jonson’s son was only seven years old at the time of his death. In this line, Jonson introduces a financial motif into the poem. He tells his son that the boy was only on loan to his father. That is, although the boy was the father’s son, he did not belong to him. And, as with any loan, Jonson must pay back the principle, in this case, the son’s life. The last three words of line 3 might seem confusing, as it sounds as if Jonson is saying to his son that he (Jonson) will be repaying the loan to his son. This is not the case. Word order and meaning in early modern English is more flexible than in the English of the twenty-first century; thus, the line actually means ‘‘You were loaned to me for seven years, and now I must pay back the loan with your life.’’ Line 4 continues the sentence begun in line 3. Jonson states that it is providence, or destiny, that requires payment of the loan. Furthermore, Jonson also lets readers know that the day of his son’s death was also his son’s birthday. The word ‘‘just’’ in this line has multiple meanings. In the first place, it means ‘‘exact,’’ as in the expression ‘‘just so.’’ So the repayment comes on the exact day of the son’s birth. In addition, ‘‘just’’ also carries with it the connotation of justice, as in a just law. Thus, Jonson sees in the coincidence of the child’s death on his birthday a kind of divine justice in action.
Lines 5–8 Line 5 begins with a outcry from Jonson, as if he is overcome with grief. He wishes that he could somehow not be the child’s parent at this moment. But this is an expression of grief, not of reality. The point here is that if he could somehow not be the child’s father, he would not feel so much pain. The interjection of the heartfelt exclamation juxtaposed with the previous line’s financial motif makes the outpouring of grief all the more painful. Immediately after the exclamation point, however, Jonson rounds out the line with two words that begin a new sentence completed in line 6. In this sentence, Jonson asks why it is that
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people feel grief when they know that the loved one will be in a better place. He continues this thought in lines 7 and 8. Not only will his son be in a better place, he will also escape the pains and sorrow visited upon the body in life. Jonson further asserts in line 8 that even if someone is fortunate enough to escape most of the illnesses and misfortune life offers, there is still the misery of old age. A child who dies young does not have to experience the loss of physical or mental function due to aging.
Lines 9–12 Line 9 contains two phrases often found in epitaphs. Indeed, lines 9 and 10 read as if they could be carved onto the boy’s tombstone. In these lines, Jonson wishes for his son peaceful rest. In addition, he asserts that his child is the best of all of his creative works. Line 10 also presents an interesting detail of early modern English. In present-day English, possession is marked by an apostrophe followed by the letter ‘‘s.’’ For example, in present-day English, the phrase ‘‘the book of Ben Jonson’’ could also be written ‘‘Ben Jonson’s book.’’ In early modern English, the same phrase could be correctly written ‘‘Ben Jonson his book.’’ (The apostrophe in present-day English stands in for the missing part of the word ‘‘his.’’) Poets in Jonson’s time had a choice between using ‘‘his’’ or the apostrophe, depending on what they needed in order to maintain their meter. Jonson concludes the poem with a promise that he will never indulge himself by caring for another human being as much as he has his son. The lines suggest that Jonson wants to protect himself against future pain, although it is also possible that he is attempting to correct the sin noted in line 2, of having too much hope for his son. In either case, as a reader, it is difficult to imagine Jonson being successful in keeping this vow. The rest of the poem points to a person who experiences grief and life deeply.
THEMES Grief In ‘‘On My First Son,’’ Jonson provides a glimpse into deep, fatherly grief over the loss of his first child, Benjamin, who died from the plague on his seventh birthday. Through simple, straightforward language, Jonson expresses this grief while, at the same time, attempting to assuage it. In the
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first two lines of the poem, Jonson addresses the boy as if he is present, and says goodbye to him, telling him that he was his pride and joy. Indeed, it is as if Jonson blames himself in line 2, saying that it was sinful of him to have so much pride and hope in the boy. In lines 3 and 4, Jonson turns away from the outright expression of grief in an attempt to explain why the boy has been taken. He uses a financial metaphor, referring to the boy’s life as a loan. Thus, Jonson attempts to comfort himself with the knowledge that God had only temporarily loaned the boy to his father, and that now, because it is the boy’s time to return to God, the father must repay the debt. However, no sooner does Jonson make this assertion than the full force of his grief emerges. In line 5, he exclaims that if he could, he would not be the boy’s father. He does not mean in this line that he truly would not want to be Benjamin’s father, but rather, he does not want to feel the pain a father necessarily feels upon the death of his child. Again, after this outburst, Jonson tries to assuage his own grief by wondering why a person should be so grief stricken when he knows, as a Christian, that his son will be in heaven. He further attempts to comfort himself by saying that his son will not be subject to all the pain and misery the world heaps upon a person, including that of growing old. In other words, his son, having died young, will never know how difficult life can be. He will have gone directly from a young and joyful life to heaven, a place where he will be happy for all eternity. Jonson seems to come to terms with his grief through the writing of the poem. Yet the very last line suggests perhaps otherwise, depending on the reading. In this line, Jonson says that he is promising on the life of his son that in the future; he will not be overly attached to that which he loves. While this is the apparent meaning of the poem, that one should never love another person more than one loves God, there is also the sense that Jonson intends to use the memory of his grief for his son to harden himself against future losses. By refusing to ‘‘like’’ what he loves, he can perhaps save himself the pain of future grief.
Death Death is one of the great mysteries of humankind. It can come slowly, or suddenly, but come it will, to every living creature. In act 3, scene 1 of Hamlet, written by Jonson’s great contemporary
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Read several accounts of the lives of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Prepare an essay in which you compare and contrast the two men, using such criteria as their biographies, their work, and their influence on those who came after. Why do you think that Jonson was considered the finest writer of his age but has not achieved the same level of popularity Shakespeare still has even in the twenty-first century?
Read the young-adult novel At the Sign of the Sugared Plum (2003) by Mary Hooper, a fictional account of two young women’s experiences in plague-stricken London during the seventeenth century. With a group of your peers, write a scene from the novel as a play and present your scene to your classmates.
With a small group of students, research the Black Death by reading articles in books and online. Working as a team, prepare a video or multimedia presentation for your class about what you have learned about the plague. Be prepared to answer questions
William Shakespeare, Hamlet calls death ‘‘the undiscover’d country from whose bourn / No traveler returns.’’ This, of course, is the issue: since no one survives death, there is no one to return to tell people what to expect. This gap in human knowledge is one that people have tried to fill for millennia, through religion, art, and literature. Jonson, in ‘‘On My First Son,’’ does his best to come to terms with the death of his seven-year-old son by relying on standard Christian consolation. In lines 3 and 4, he reports that his child’s death has been required by fate, another way saying that the child’s death is a part of God’s divine providence. Jonson must try to console himself by admitting that his child’s life was really only on loan to him, from God, and that it is God’s prerogative to call the loan in. These lines, then, suggest that Jonson sees death
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from your classmates after showing them the presentation. An epitaph is a short verse or pithy sentiment that is inscribed on a gravestone. Collect as many epitaphs as you can find online, or by visiting cemeteries. Create a collage of epitaphs to share with your classmates, and write a epitaph for yourself. How would you like to be remembered? Ben Jonson often used the epigram as a poetic form for invitations, letters, compliments, elegies, and reflection. Read Jonson’s epigram ‘‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’’ several times. Look up any references or words you do not recognize to help you understand the poem. Then write a poetic invitation to a friend to come to your house to supper, modeling your poem after Jonson’s. Read Jonson’s poem ‘‘On My First Daughter.’’ What were the circumstances surrounding the death of Jonson’s daughter? Write an essay in which you compare and contrast this poem with ‘‘On My First Son.’’
as not only inevitable, but that each death comes at its own time, no matter how painful it is for those who are left. The second feature of standard Christian consolation can be found in lines 6 through 8. In these lines, Jonson questions why someone should be unhappy over the death of a child, when through that death, the child not only achieves heaven, he or she also escapes all of the trials and tribulations of living. Such thoughts were common in Jonson’s time; Shakespeare gives voice to something similar in Hamlet’s act 3, scene 1 soliloquy: ‘‘To die, to sleep— / No more, and by a sleep to say we end / The heartache and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wish’d.’’ Death, then, becomes the passage out of a painful life and into eternal bliss. And yet, for
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Epigrams are often satiric or humorous, and Jonson wrote many such epigrams. However, Jonson also expanded the genre, and used the epigram to write invitations, epistles, reflective poems, compliments, and eulogies. He also used the epigram in its original sense, that of the epitaph. While not humorous, ‘‘On My First Son’’ meets the requirements of the genre: it is short, highly polished, and tightly constructed. In addition, it is witty without being funny. Jonson uses puns throughout the poem, including the allusion to his son as his right hand—Benjamin means ‘‘right hand’’ in Hebrew. In addition, when he calls his son a piece of poetry, he is punning on the Greek word for poetry, poesis, a word that originally meant ‘‘making.’’ A poet, then, is a maker, and his poem is something he made, just as a father makes a son.
Father holding his son’s hand (Image copyright Vita Khorzhevska, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Jonson, this explanation does not seem to sit comfortably. In the last line of the poem, he suggests that he will have to guard his feelings so that he does not have to suffer so much pain in the future at the death of a loved one. While he pays lip service to Christian consolation, it appears that he remains unconsoled.
STYLE Epigram ‘‘On My First Son’’ is included in Jonson’s 1616 collection Epigrams, and is a good example of the genre of epigrams. The word ‘‘epigram’’ comes from two Greek words that mean ‘‘to write on’’ or ‘‘to inscribe.’’ In the Classical world of Greece and Rome, an epigram was literally an inscription, often serving as an epitaph for the dead. The greatest writer of epigrams in the Classical world was Martial, a Roman writer who lived during the first century CE . His work in Latin was wellknown among English writers of the Renaissance. By Jonson’s time, an epigram meant a pithy saying, characterized by precision, economy of language, balance, wit, and polish. It could also be a short poem with the same characteristics. Jonson used Martial’s work as a model, and most scholars cite Jonson as the greatest writer of epigrams in English.
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Another characteristic of Jonson’s epigrams and of later epigrams in English is the use of closed, rhyming couplets. Couplets are simply two contiguous lines of poetry that rhyme at the end. This, and the regular use of iambic pentameter in ‘‘On My First Son’’ provides a tightly controlled structure through which Jonson can express his grief.
Elegy and Epitaph The word ‘‘elegy’’ comes from the Greek elegos meaning ‘‘lament.’’ Usually, an elegy is a reflective meditation on a particular death, although in English, elegies can also be meditations on death in general, or on war or love. Indeed, the Elizabethans frequently called their love poems elegies. Later, however, elegy came to be strongly identified with mourning. A second word associated with writing that concerns death is ‘‘epitaph.’’ An epitaph is generally an inscription on a burial marker, and often begins with the words ‘‘here lies.’’ The purpose of an epitaph is to name the person who is buried, and provide some pithy information about the person. Jonson’s epitaph on his tomb in Westminster Abbey reads simply, ‘‘O Rare Ben Jonson.’’ (Visitors to Westminster will note that Jonson’s name is spelled incorrectly on his grave as ‘‘Johnson.’’) Jonson’s epitaph illustrates particular economy and wit. Many scholars assert that it is a pun; orare in Latin means ‘‘pray for.’’ ‘‘On My First Son’’ demonstrates the characteristics of the elegy in that it is a reflective poem about a death that meditates on the nature of death itself. At the same time, it closes with
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what is clearly an epitaph, in that it uses the words ‘‘here lies,’’ referring to the burial of Jonson’s son. In addition, the epitaphic ending provides closure to the earlier meditation on the nature of death.
little wonder that thoughts of death were never far from people’s minds.
Thus, Jonson’s poem ‘‘On My First Son’’ qualifies as an epigram, an elegy, and an epitaph. Jonson’s skillful use of these literary forms demonstrates keen wit, careful use of language, and the balanced phrases he pioneered in the early seventeenth century.
1603, the year of Jonson’s composition of ‘‘On My First Son’’ was a year of great transitions. Most importantly, the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I came to an end.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Plague in England, 1600–1604 Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease present in rodents that is spread by fleas that bite an infected rodent, and then bite a human or other susceptible animal. Once infected, humans and other animals can spread the disease through exposure to bodily fluids. The lymph glands swell dramatically, forming ‘‘buboes.’’ In the modern world, bubonic plague can be treated with antibiotics; left untreated, it is very often fatal. In 1348 and 1349, bubonic plague swept all over Europe in an epidemic known as the Black Death. It is difficult to even imagine the devastation that this disease caused. By 1350, as much as half of the human population of Europe had died; in some areas, the death toll was as high as 70 percent. And then the deaths slowed, and stopped. It appeared that the plague was over. Such was not the case, however. According to John Kelly in his book The Great Mortality, a ‘‘new epidemic, which began in 1361, marked the beginning of a long wave of plague death that would roll on through more than three centuries.’’ Jonson’s son Ben died in one such wave of plague that spread through England between 1600 and 1604. While not as widespread or as devastating as the earlier epidemics, the mortality rate was still high. Moreover, the continuing incidences of epidemic plague reminded the population that life was fraught with uncertainty, and death could call at any moment. In 1665 alone, the Great Plague of London, chronicled by the writer Daniel Defoe, killed some 100,000 people in London and the surrounding area, according to A. Lloyd Moote and Dorothy C. Moote in their 2004 book, The Great Plague: The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year. It is
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England in 1603
Elizabeth, born in 1533, was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, the commoner Anne Boleyn. Catholics in England and throughout the world did not believe that the union between the king and Boleyn was legitimate: it was only made possible by Henry’s ultimate break with the Catholic Church in Rome and his formation of the Church of England under the Archbishop of Canterbury. Consequently, Elizabeth herself was regarded was an illegitimate child by many people. When the king had Boleyn executed in 1536, Elizabeth was no longer regarded as a princess and was removed from the line of succession. When Henry died in 1547, he was succeeded by his young son, Edward VI. A sickly boy, Edward died at fifteen, in 1553. Edward, a Protestant, and his advisors did not want the throne to go to Henry’s other remaining child, the Catholic Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine. After Edward’s death, his advisors plotted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne, a position she held for just nine days before Mary took her rightful and legal place as the Queen of England. Queen Mary, known among some as ‘‘Bloody Mary’’ for her persecution of Protestants, ruled England until 1558. During part of this time, Elizabeth was under house arrest. Upon Mary’s death, Queen Elizabeth I ascended to the throne. She was a Protestant, but worked toward a middle way, neither welcoming nor persecuting (for the most part) Catholics. Under Elizabeth, English culture flourished. In addition, with the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a naval fleet sent by King Philip of Spain to invade England, England quickly established itself as a world power under Elizabeth’s rule. Elizabeth did not marry, however, in spite of many political maneuvers and intrigues. As she grew older, this became increasingly worrisome for the English. They feared social upheaval and political instability as the long-reigning queen neared the end of her life. Ultimately, it was decided by Elizabeth and her ministers that
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
Today: According to the Centers for Disease Control, human cases of bubonic plague in the United States in the twenty-first century average between 10 and 15 cases per year, and there are virtually no recorded cases anywhere in England in this century.
and Laura Gowing in Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England (2000).
1600s: Plague continues to resurface in Europe throughout the seventeenth century. In 1665 alone, 68,596 Londoners die of the disease.
1600s: One in five children die before they reach the age of ten in seventeenth-century England, according to Patricia M. Crawford
King James VI of Scotland had the best claim to the throne. Elizabeth’s death in 1603 came after a rule of 45 years. During her reign, men from humble beginnings such as Jonson were able to achieve great fame and notoriety for their artistic efforts. For those long accustomed to Elizabeth’s rule, the accession of James the VI of Scotland as James I of England must have seemed strange indeed. What Jonson could not have known in 1603, however, was that King James I would be even more amenable to the theater and to his plays and poetry than Elizabeth had been. If the English language flourished under Elizabeth, Jonson’s fortunes flourished under James. Despite the terrible outbreak of plague in 1603, the year marked an upward movement in the arc of Jonson’s career.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Jonson enjoyed a great deal of popularity in his own day, primarily for his plays such as Every Man in His Humour and Volpone; or The Fox. In addition, his poetry was so well thought of in his
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Today: About 6 children in 1,000 die before the age of five in England. 1600s: By the time of his death, Ben Jonson is, according to his biographer David Riggs in his 1989 book Ben Jonson: A Life, the most famous poet of his age, and is viewed by his contemporaries as the finest writer of the time. Today: William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson’s contemporary, is far more popular than Jonson, and most scholars consider him the greatest writer in the English language.
own day that the next generation of poets styled themselves as ‘‘Sons of Ben.’’ Jonson’s 1616 collection Epigrams, the collection that includes his 1603 poem ‘‘On My First Son,’’ contains some of Jonson’s very best work. This collection, and particularly ‘‘On My First Son,’’ continue to attract significant critical attention. Wesley Trimpi, for example, in his classic book Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style (1962), argues that the relationship between the father and son is the most important thematic concern of the poem. He writes, ‘‘The theme is rather the relation between father and son than the death of a child.’’ Likewise, Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth in their 1979 book Ben Jonson also focus on the relationship between father and son as well as noting that the poem is specifically about ‘‘the reconciliation of a father to the loss of a son. This relationship is strikingly underlined by allusions, witty in their subtlety, but never indecorous.’’ In a 1972 study appearing in the journal ELH, Arthur F. Marotti comments on Jonson’s economy of words in ‘‘On My First Son.’’ Marotti writes, ‘‘When we read the epitaph [Jonson] composed for the boy, we are struck as much by
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Cemetery (Image copyright Brittany Courville, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
what he does not say as by what he does. . . . The epigraph’s miniature form (small in comparison to the formal elegy) interacts with the large emotion it adumbrates.’’ Marotti argues that Jonson emphasizes the emotional content of his grief by condensing the poem to its most potent parts, leaving out nearly all imagery and emotion. Several scholars relate the story of Jonson’s dream while he is away from London avoiding the plague. In the dream, Jonson sees his son’s death. When he awakens, he is relieved to know that it was only a dream. However, just a little later, he receives a letter from his wife relating the death of their son in precisely the same manner he has foreseen. David Lee Miller, in particular, writing in a 1994 essay appearing in Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, finds significance in the dream. He argues that such dreams (and by extension, such poems) are ‘‘the essential dream[s] of a culture founded by Abraham and refounded by Jesus on the sacrifice of the son’s body to the Father’s word.’’ Scott Newstok takes a different approach in his analysis of ‘‘On My First Son.’’ Newstok, in
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his article ‘‘Elegies Ending ‘Here’: The Poetics of Epitaphic Closure’’ (2006), makes a distinction between the elegy and the epitaph, noting that an epitaph refers directly to the tombstone. He also notes that epitaphs can occur within an elegy, and provide closure for the poem, and for the life it commemorates. He cites Jonson’s ‘‘On My First Son’’ as a ‘‘paradigmatic instance’’ of this maneuver; according to Newstok, ‘‘The early, mournful address to the deceased child eventually shifts to a terminal epitaph.’’ Finally, Eric Haralson, in his chapter ‘‘Manly Tears: Men’s Elegies for Children in NineteenthCentury American Culture’’ in Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S. (2002), discusses the ‘‘gender divide’’ between elegies written for girls and those written for boys. He argues that ‘‘in the Anglo American tradition, the gender divide in child elegies might conveniently be traced back to the pairing ‘On My First Daughter’ and ‘On My First Son.’’’ Haralson further argues that Jonson misses his son more than he does his daughter, and that his son is ‘‘instrumental to the poet’s very identity as a maker.’’
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CRITICISM Diane Andrews Henningfeld Henningfeld is a professor emerita at Adrian College where she taught literature and writing for many years. She continues to write widely about literature for a variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she examines Jonson’s transformation of two distinct traditions in English poetry, as represented by ‘‘On My First Son.’’ David Riggs, in his fine biography of the playwright and poet Ben Jonson, Ben Jonson: A Life (1989) writes, ‘‘By the time of [Jonson’s] death . . . he had become the most celebrated poet of his age, a man who outshone even Shakespeare and Donne in the eyes of his contemporaries.’’ Jonson’s popularity in his own time was such that King James I made him the first poet laureate of England, providing him with a pension for his work as court poet. While Jonson’s reputation has faded in subsequent centuries, any examination of the history of English poetry will reveal his considerable importance to the development of the short lyric. His influence was felt during his own lifetime; as Gamini Salgado, writing in the 1991 Reference Guide to English Literature, argues, ‘‘Contemporary practitioners of verse esteemed him so highly that a group of them, which included Herrick, Suckling, and Carew, styled themselves the Sons of Ben and produced a commemorative volume Jonsonius Virbius after his death in 1637.’’ His contemporaries and modern scholars hold something in common: the recognition that Jonson’s epigrams, in particular, demonstrate a shift in the style and structure of the short poem. Jonson inherited two very different traditions of poetry in English, and through his impressive learning, clear language, and deep understanding of the human condition, he was able to transform both traditions, melding them together into a style and vocabulary still recognizable today. The first tradition that Jonson inherited is what the scholar Wesley Trimpi, in his seminal Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style (1962), and John Williams, in his introduction to the second edition of English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson (1990), identify as the native tradition. Williams argues that the native tradition in Elizabethan poetry is a direct descendent of medieval poetry. Further, he identifies several important
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IN THE END, THE TOOLS JONSON USED WERE THOSE HE INHERITED FROM BOTH THE NATIVE AND PETRARCHAN TRADITIONS; THE ARTISTRY OF USING THOSE TOOLS, HOWEVER, WAS UNIQUELY HIS OWN.’’
characteristics of poetry written in this tradition: ‘‘The subject of the Native poem is usually broad and generic and of . . . persistent human significance; the purpose to which the subject is put is instructive or informative or judicial . . . the Native poet speaks from his own intelligence.’’ Thus, a poem such as John Skelton’s ‘‘Upon a Dead Man’s Head’’ offers a good example of this style. Written in the late fifteenth century, this poem addresses the most significant of all human concerns, the awareness of the inevitability of death. The situation of this poem is that of the poet contemplating a skull. Skelton describes in simple but graphic and dreadful terms the way the body disintegrates upon death. He informs his readers that death is universal, and will come to every human being; no one can escape the fate of bodily corruption. Finally, he instructs readers to set their thoughts on Jesus and the Virgin Mary, rather than on the things of the world. Only through steadfast belief in Jesus will the reader’s eternal soul be rescued from the horrors of bodily death. The style of the poem is straightforward, and not in the least sophisticated. Its content takes precedence over its style, and the very short lines bump along to the inevitable end rhyme. Williams also notes that while the native tradition matures and finds fine voice in later poets such as Walter Raleigh, it retains some essential characteristics. According to Williams, ‘‘the diction is deliberately plain, almost bare, and subservient to the substance or argument of the poem. The syntax moves toward simplicity, most units being straightforward and declarative.’’ In other words, poetry written in the native tradition tends to use a plain, not embellished, vocabulary; the words used in the poem are less important than the message of the poem; and the syntax, or word order, of the
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
Debra Johanyak’s 2004 Shakespeare’s World provides a great deal of information about the social and cultural milieu of Jonson’s time. In addition, the book offers a closer look at William Shakespeare, Jonson’s friend and contemporary, providing a contrast between the two writers. Gary Soto’s 2003 young-adult novel The Afterlife tells the story of a seventeen-yearold Latino boy named Chuy who is killed in a men’s room at a dance hall as the book opens. The story is told from Chuy’s point of view, and reveals how much his family loves him and grieves for him, among other thematic concerns. The Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s collection Death of a Naturalist, first published in 1966, and available in a 1999 paperback edition from Faber, includes two poems thematically connected to ‘‘On My First Son.’’ ‘‘Digging’’ is about writing and
poem is straightforward and simple, written as declarative sentences, without embellishment. The second tradition that Jonson inherits goes by several names. Some scholars call it the Petrarchan style, others the courtly style, and still others, the gilded style. Petrarch was a fourteenthcentury Italian poet who wrote, among other things, a series of beautiful sonnets about love. In the 1530s, the English courtier and poet Thomas Wyatt visited Italy, and brought Petrarch’s sonnets back with him to England, where he began translating them. The poems became very popular in England among the courtly class, and soon young poets were all emulating the style. Unlike the native tradition, Petrarchan poetry is, according to Williams, ‘‘suggestive and indirect.’’ Further, in this style, it is the vocabulary and use of language that is paramount, rather than the message. They are filled with references to beautiful, idealized women, and elegant appeals
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the relationship between father and son, while ‘‘Mid-term Break’’ is a poem about a young boy’s death, and the grief his father and sibling feel.
A. E. Houseman’s poem ‘‘To An Athlete Dying Young,’’ published in A Shropshire Lad (1896), tells the story of a young man who dies at the peak of his prowess, before he must witness his records being broken and experience his body aging.
The Lovely Bones (2002) by Alice Seabold tells the story of a young girl who is murdered and her family’s grief over her death.
Like Ben Jonson, his contemporary William Shakespeare also lost a son, Hamnet. Bill Bryson’s 2007 biography of Shakespeare, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, is an accounting of Shakespeare’s life, including a discussion of the death of his son.
to the Muses, Greek goddesses of the arts who were often invoked by artists, musicians, and writers. In addition, as Williams notes further, ‘‘The relationship between the syntactical unit and the poetic line is a great deal more flexible and varied, with syntactical units frequently running abruptly over the line and completing themselves at odd and unexpected positions.’’ What Williams notes here is that in the Petrarchan style, sentences and phrases are not necessarily attached to a particular line. Rather, a sentence can stop abruptly midline, or spill over into the next. By the end of the sixteenth century, the conventions of Petrarchan poetry are so well-known, and so often badly executed, that poets such as Jonson’s contemporary William Shakespeare can parody the work in their own sonnets. For example, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, ‘‘My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun,’’ Shakespeare juxtaposes the description of a real-life woman
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with the silly, idealized, and, by now, cliche´d descriptions of Petrarchan poetry. Thus, by the very early years of the seventeenth century, Jonson has before him both the direct language of the native style and the flexibility and beauty of the Petrarchan style at his disposal. No other poet before him was able to meld so well the two traditions. Trimpi’s term for Jonson’s style is the classic plain style, referencing Jonson’s close familiarity with classical writers such as Seneca and Martial, while Williams calls it simply plain style. In either case, as Williams argues, Jonson’s poetry ‘‘is the first in English . . . that is really capable of comprehending the extreme range and diversity of human experience, without falsifying that experience or doing violence to it.’’ ‘‘On My First Son’’ supports Williams’s arguments. Jonson’s vocabulary in this poem is largely based on Anglo-Saxon words, as opposed to Latinate forms. In addition, his diction, or word choice, is plain and simple, devoid of the artificiality that marks so much of the Petrarchan poetry. Like the best native poetry, ‘‘On My First Son’’ is instructive as well as informative. Jonson tells his reader that his son has died, that he is grieving, but that he can be consoled by knowing his son is in a better place and that he has been spared the ravages of age. By placing his own experience as a model, others might learn how to cope with extraordinary grief. The flexibility introduced into English poetry by the incursion of the Petrarchan model is also evident in this poem. Although the poem is regularly metered, it does not have the heavy stresses of the native style. In addition, lines 5 and 6 illustrate both caesura (a break that occurs midline) as well as enjambment (the carrying over of a thought from one line to the next without a pause at the end of the line). Neither of these stylistic devices was available to a writer in the strictly native tradition. Thus, while Jonson is also clearly referencing his training in the classical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans in this poem, he is filtering it through the native sensibility as well as the stylistic devices of Petrarchan poetry. His subject and his style are in perfect balance, neither taking precedence over the other. Such a melding of styles allows for greater subtlety and sophistication than either tradition was able to accomplish on its own.
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In addition, Jonson’s transformation of the traditions he inherited allow him to speak directly to the reader about his own personal experience in clear, economical, and moving phrases. As James Loxley writes in The Complete Critical Guide to Ben Jonson (2001), the poem is ‘‘a mapping of grief which traces the complexities of a psychological state claimed, unequivocally, for the poet himself. Guilt and shame mingle with the attempts at self-consolation.’’ Finally, in poems such as ‘‘On My First Son,’’ Jonson demonstrates his supreme balancing of not only subject and expression, but also of emotion and intellect. As Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth note in their book Ben Jonson (1979), ‘‘On My First Son’’ ‘‘recognizes conflicting impulses in the response to loss. Again, there is tension between intellectual and emotional reactions.’’ It is a testament to Jonson’s great skill as a writer that he is able, in the twelve short lines of ‘‘On My First Son,’’ to express deeply felt grief directly to the reader, offer a form of consolation and instruction, and produce a beautifully worded poem. In the end, the tools Jonson used were those he inherited from both the native and Petrarchan traditions; the artistry of using those tools, however, was uniquely his own. Source: Diane Andrews Henningfeld, Critical Essay on ‘‘On My First Son,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Joshua Scodel In the following excerpt, Scodel explains the literary and historical context of ‘‘On My First Son.’’ ‘‘On My First Sonne,’’ Ben Jonson’s most compelling short poem, has received much excellent commentary, yet critics have not thoroughly explored the most relevant literary and historical contexts for understanding the poem. Jonson does not simply attempt to confront and conquer his grief over the loss of a son. He transforms a traditional generic combination, the elegy with a final epitaph, in order to bury and commemorate his son properly. Residing in Huntingdonshire during the 1603 London plague with his mentor William Camden and Sir Robert Cotton, Jonson, after premonitions of his son’s death, learned in a letter from his wife that his son had died. Jonson had probably been estranged from his wife and therefore away from his children since 1602. By contemporary standards, Jonson had certainly neglected his patriarchal obligations in the summer
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of 1603: it was considered the particular responsibility of the male head of a household to look after his family in time of plague. Jonson could not have attended the burial of his son, which would have taken place quickly after death. He thus failed to pay his final debt to his son. He could not have been satisfied with the burial his son received: during plague, funeral ceremonies were sharply curtailed, and most of the dead, instead of being buried in the consecrated ground of churches or churchyards with burial services, were quickly ‘‘covered simply with a winding-sheet, and flung without burial rites into pest-pits.’’ Jonson’s son, as a Catholic child, would have had even less chance of being properly buried. In ‘‘On My First Sonne’’ Jonson provides a compensatory burial ritual and an individualizing, immortalizing gravestone inscription for the boy who was in all likelihood unceremoniously buried in an unmarked grave. The poem thus implicitly asserts the power of poetry’s verbal rituals and constructs: poetry can provide a proper burial for the dead without a body or a priest and a worthy monument to the dead without a material tomb. Source: Joshua Scodel, ‘‘Genre and Occasion in Jonson’s ‘On My First Sonne,’’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 86, No. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 235–59.
J. Z. Kronenfeld In the following article, Kronenfeld argues that ‘‘On My First Son’’ can be viewed as more than a theological work. Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and ioy; My sinne was too much hope of thee, lou’d boy, Seuen yeeres tho’wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the iust day. O, could I loose all father, now. For why Will man lament the state he should enuie? To haue so soone scap’d worlds, and fleshes rage, And, if no other miserie, yet age? Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lye BEN.IONSON his best piece of poetrie. For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such, As what he loues may neuer like too much. Critical understanding of poetry normally involves an attempt to see it in relation to culturally available beliefs and attitudes. However, the
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INSOFAR AS THE POEM ACHIEVES A RESOLUTION AT ALL, IT MUST FIND A PLACE FOR JONSON’S HUMAN FATHERHOOD AND MUST RECONCILE THAT FATHERHOOD WITH HIS CHRISTIANITY.’’
decision that a particular framework is relevant must be based on the fullest possible understanding of the text and of the range of available beliefs—explicit or implicit; frameworks used in too doctrinaire a manner may mislead rather than illuminate. The only two detailed critical treatments of Ben Jonson’s extremely moving Epigram XLV consider the poem in terms of a particular theological framework—one that firmly distinguishes love of the human or temporal from love of the divine and eternal. This perspective, which at first appears to illuminate the problem of the poem’s speaker and to point to its solution, is, in fact, misleading. Both critics too readily turn to a particular doctrine to define the concerns of the poem. They do not look closely enough at the statements the poem itself makes for indications of its specific use of available beliefs and attitudes, and for indications of the kind of theological solution it ultimately reaches—which is actually much less dogmatic than they would have it. My reading, therefore, must begin with an explanation of why these readings, and the theological distinction on which they are based, subtly but significantly misconstrue the subject and resolution of the poem, failing to account precisely for its language and tone, and failing to account for its total effect. Francis Fike and W. David Kay agree that the crux of the poem is Jonson’s ‘‘confession’’ (l. 2) that he has misplaced metaphysical hopes for his own immortality or blessedness on a transitory human object—his child. For Fike, Jonson had ‘‘placed hope in his son . . . to the point of sinful idolatry— to the point, perhaps, that the child Benjamin and not God had become the ground of his hope for deliverance from death’’ (208–9). His idolatry took the form of ‘‘inordinate affection’’ (210). Similarly, for Kay, Jonson has failed to observe a traditional
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distinction such as Augustine’s: we should ‘‘use’’ (or ‘‘enjoy in God’’) the temporal, but only ‘‘enjoy’’ the eternal for its own sake. According to Kay, Jonson confesses that he had not ‘‘enjoyed his son ‘in God,’ but had ‘placed his hope of blessedness’ in the child alone’’ (134). These readings make the subject of the poem the Christian’s relationship to his God—a relationship that has been endangered by a willful confusion of the love appropriate for the temporal with the love appropriate for the eternal—rather than the father’s relationship to his son. While showing that there exists an ample tradition of solutions to the problem of the misapplication of metaphysical expectations, Kay and Fike do not convincingly establish that the poem actually concerns such expectations. Because they interpret line 2 as a confession of the sin of idolatry, they cannot satisfactorily avoid the implication that Jonson almost immediately confesses that he has in some sense loved his son too much. Consequently, these critics too quickly resolve, and, in part, misconstrue, the persistent conflict between the loving father and the Christian. These readings fail to explain why a frank and unmitigated expression of love, and even of parental pride, co-exists with the recognition of a ‘‘sinne’’ of ‘‘too much hope.’’ They are forced to regard the final vow (ll. 11–12) as a redressing of the presumed sin of idolatry and thus to misinterpret it. Finally, they preclude the recognition that the poem actually achieves a genuine emotional reconciliation of its conflicting claims, rather than a victory of the Christian over the father. The theological framework that underlies such readings insists on a firm subordination of love of the temporal to love of the eternal; in fact, within this framework, ordinary human affection is not considered a form of Christian love at all. For Augustine, God alone may be ‘‘enjoyed’’— since He is perfect Being and the end of all desires; men may only be enjoyed ‘‘in God,’’ or, more properly, ‘‘used.’’ Thus, man is not to be loved ‘‘for his own sake’’ but because we love God and would enjoy Him. Although Kay’s argument depends on such an equation, Augustine’s appropriate love or ‘‘use’’ of humans is not really equivalent to ordinary human affection; it is Christian love of neighbor—‘‘either because [he is] righteous or in order that [he] may be righteous’’— which is in itself subordinate to love of God, but is in no sense ‘‘an extension of family affection.’’ For Augustine, the private, natural human affections
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‘‘based on natural relationships, whether of family or friendship or of a common humanity’’ are forms of ‘‘carnal’’ or worldly love. According to Kay, then, Jonson confesses that he has ‘‘enjoyed’’ man, or placed ‘‘too much hope’’ in him; we must note that this interpretation has the specific theological sense of expecting man to fulfill metaphysical hopes for a final good. But even if the Augustinian distinction is not literally applicable—since appropriate love or ‘‘use’’ of humans is not concerned with ordinary familial affection—it strongly suggests that ordinary human affection may be over-extended, that one may love one’s friends or children in the wrong way, or too much, with an ‘‘inordinate affection’’ (Fike, 210; Kay, 134, n. 20). Indeed, in the sixteenth-century literature of consolation ‘‘too much hope’’ seems very much like ‘‘too much love.’’ As Miles Coverdale says in his Treatise on Death (c. 1550), when warning us to avoid making man an ‘‘idol,’’ ‘‘God himself will be he, of whom all good things undoubtedly must be hoped and looked for; and unto his dishonour it serveth, if the heart cleave not only unto him. . . . [B]lessed is the man that setteth his love, comfort and hope upon the Lord.’’ Another passage implies that ordinary human affection is not under consideration, as in Augustine: we are enjoined to love our friends ‘‘not for affection to them’’ but because ‘‘God hath commanded [us] to love them.’’ But even here a marginal note warns us not to lay out hearts, ‘‘love and affection too much’’ on the transitory humans we love (III.ix.127, my italics). Thus the critics are assuming the relevance of a framework which is either literally irrelevant to ordinary human affection, or which defines it as a false or inferior form of love that must be contrasted to true love, love of the divine. Unless love of the human shows the marks of containment or control, it must be idolatry. And they further assume that Jonson himself explicitly shares this framework and interpretation, that the excessive hope in l. 2 can only refer to such a sin. However, the central question that the poem poses is not ‘‘what is the true relationship of man to God?’’ but ‘‘what is the relationship of father to son?’’ Jonson knows intellectually that the rational or Christian solution to the problem of his grief is that the father must be subordinated to the Christian or, more than subordinated, lost, or loosed, as in ‘‘O, could I loose all father, now.’’ As St. Jerome said to Paula in his consolation on the loss of her daughter, ‘‘I pardon you the tears of a
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mother, but I ask you to restrain your grief. When I think of the parent, I cannot blame you for weeping; but when I think of the Christian . . . the mother disappears from my view.’’ But Jonson cannot draw the line between temporal fatherhood and the proper attitude of the Christian. To paraphrase lines 6–7 loosely and in their context as illustration: ‘‘O, could I only discard the feelings of a father, now that I have returned what I fully understand was only lent to me, now that the temporal object of those feelings is gone. After all, for what reason (for what purpose, to what end?) will man lament the state he should envy?’’ Although the form of the latter question suggests that it is not rational to do so, it honestly recognizes that man indeed will lament the state he should envy. He cannot ‘‘loose all father.’’ Jonson cannot stop feeling like a parent, as Jerome urges Paula to do, even though his son is dead. As temporal father, he feels that he has lost his child. He still feels humanly related to something now missed, although there is nothing to relate to—he is not really ‘‘related’’ to a child returned to God, and there is no point in thinking in terms of such a relationship. Thus a theological framework requiring that the father be lost or completely shed is just what Jonson’s analysis reveals he cannot accept; it is hardly a solution to the problem of grief, but a source of grief in itself. Consolation in accordance with such a framework essentially denies the persistence and legitimacy of Jonson’s feelings as father and the father’s extremely high valuation of his earthly creation—‘‘his best piece of poetrie’’; it gives no place to them. In a genuine emotional consolation, these feelings that persist after the loss of their object would be given a rationale, rather than merely suppressed. On the other hand, within the theological framework, resolution of the poem requires a pulling back from a ‘‘sinne’’ of ‘‘too much love’’ and consequently ‘‘a protective avoidance of grief’’ (Kay, 134, n. 20). As Coverdale in fact says, ‘‘If we fasten our hearts . . . upon our children and friends, that is, if we love them too much, and not God above all things; then hath our sorrow no measure as ought, as they are altered or taken away’’ (III.ix.127–8, my italics). But even if these emotional attitudes may be found in the consolation literature, they cannot be found in the poem. The concluding vow—‘‘As what he loues may neuer like too much’’—does not in the least suggest any plans for the mitigation of love in the future.
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Let us see what happens when we try to read the final vow in terms of the distinctions made in Augustine, the consolation literature, and the critics’ arguments. Let us suppose that the crucial distinction is here made in terms of two attitudes toward the same temporal object; we shall assume, for the moment, that the poet is concerned with the difference between ‘‘using’’ someone for the sake of God, and ‘‘enjoying’’ someone for his own sake, or, to speak in the terms of the consolation literature, that he is concerned with the difference between ‘‘appropriate love’’ and ‘‘too much love.’’ We immediately confront the significant problem of seeing ‘‘love’’ in Jonson’s line as parallel to ‘‘using’’ or ‘‘enjoying in God,’’ that is, to ‘‘appropriate love’’ or ‘‘not too much love.’’ The line does not qualify ‘‘love’’ or refer it to a context, or indeed state anything about it except its existence, while the theological arguments, which are concerned with marking the distinction between the divine and the human, are totally concerned with qualification. The ‘‘love’’ Jonson talks about here implies the very opposite of mitigation, reserve, or control; it is inevitable, unquestioned. The syntactic shape of the line takes its existence for granted, allowing for no qualifiers: ‘‘As what he loues, may neuer like too much.’’ If the theological distinction is at all relevant to Jonson’s words, it is closer to his implicit distinction between ‘‘liking’’ (possibly a form of appropriate love) and ‘‘liking too much’’ (an inappropriate love). It is liking that Jonson promises to control; he vows not to allow himself to become too pleased with what he loves. But to construe Jonson’s ‘‘love’’ as equivalent to ‘‘appropriate love’’ is to misrepresent the line. A distinction between the right amount of love and too much love, or between ‘‘using’’ something and ‘‘enjoying’’ it for its own sake, is neither equivalent to, nor has the same effect as, the statement Jonson makes; he says that one may be pleased by something or be pleased by it too much, but will inevitably love it. The theological framework posited by the critics, then, seems to lead the reader away from the precise language and the tone of the poem. Another context can be provided, however, which eliminates the misleading equation of ‘‘too much hope’’ with ‘‘too much love’’ and which permits an emotional reconciliation of the conflicting claims of the loving father and the Christian. We shall move, as the poem does, from Jonson’s positive love of his human child, which is not qualified in the way the critics suggest, to his love of the child
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as God’s gift (that is, in his true place in the scheme of things), and finally, and only implicitly, to his love of God. Jonson certainly begins his attempt at selfconsolation in accordance with the purpose of Stoic consolation: the curing of grief, a disorder of the soul. ‘‘[T]he passions of man [must be] brought vnder the obedience of reason.’’ In addition, he seems to have conceived his poem in accordance with the manner of comforting in Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique that applies to those cases where we show ‘‘either they should not lament at al, or els be sorie very little . . . ’’ (p. 65). The first four lines attest to the determination of the father to return without grudging what he knows was only a temporary loan and to draw the appropriate lessons from his loss. Nevertheless, these lines do not subordinate or reject his human love of the child, but maintain it, alongside a recognition of the fallibility of his human hopes. When Jonson names Benjamin and directs attention to the positive connotations of his name by calling him ‘‘thou child of my right hand,’’ he is saying something more than what he would have said by using the phrase ‘‘child of the right hand’’ or ‘‘son of the right hand’’ (the literal meaning of Benjamin). The difference between the two expressions lies in the emphasis on the father as the transmitter of the fortunate or auspicious qualities (masculine strength, goodness, etc.) almost universally associated with the right hand as opposed to the left. Seen in this light, the phrase does emphasize the relationship of father to son, and does suggest the role of the father as giver or creator, in a purely biological or temporal line of transmission, a suggestion reinforced by the allusion to the son as something he made in line 10. Thus, readers who have detected a note of parental pride in the phrase are not without justification. The first line of the poem does suggest Jonson’s earthly delight in his son, and that delight is at least in part grounded in the son as an extension of the father. It is not at all necessary to assume that the poem makes a judgment against this kind of feeling. ‘‘My sinne was too much hope of thee’’ obviously co-exists with the re-assertion of the poet’s love in the immediately following ‘‘lou’d boy,’’ which phrase does not necessarily mean ‘‘boy who was loved,’’ but ‘‘beloved boy,’’ boy who is still loved. Similarly, this admission of guilt or fault need not undermine or even seriously
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qualify the first line of the poem with which it co-exists, but may describe a sense not pertaining to feelings of love, joy, and reasonable parental pride in which Jonson was at fault. Jonson has not come close to wrecking his life on the illusion that the mortal may be equated with the eternal, as Fike suggests (219); he has not expected that his son was immortal—even in an emotional sense—or that he might achieve immortality through his son, but has rather erred in his expectations of what was his earthly due. An understanding of this crucial distinction must begin with the recognition that Jonson’s poem concerns ‘‘unseasonable death,’’ the death of a young boy. As Plutarch says in his ‘‘Consolation to Appollonius,’’ ‘‘we meet with some persons who affirm that the death of everyone is not to be lamented, but only of those who die untimely; for they have not tasted of those things which we call enjoyments in the world. . . . It is for the sake of these things that we condole with those who lose friends by untimely death, because they were frustrated of their hopes . . . ’’ (my italics). Or, as Jeremy Taylor, the Anglican divine, says, ‘‘[some] can well bear the death of infants [having understood little, they lost little], but when they have spent some years of childhood or youth, . . . when the parents are to reap the comfort of all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them.’’ Now timely and untimely death may both teach the vanity of placing ‘‘too much hope’’ on the earthly. To live either as if one’s children were immortal or as if they were given to us for an assured, though finite, period is to be confused about the nature of the temporal. But one can see the crucial importance of the distinction. It is one thing to expect to satisfy immortal goals with mortal things—this alone is Augustine’s false ‘‘enjoyment’’—and another to expect, however improperly, one’s full or due mortal share of mortal things, that is, that one’s children will attain maturity. One may indeed accept mortality and yet not accept ‘‘unseasonable death.’’ The consolation literature reminds the bereaved that there ‘‘really’’ is no difference—while making clear that the general human perception of difference is well recognized. As Miles Coverdale says, ‘‘we think the death of children to be unnatural, even as when the flame of fire through water is violently quenched. The death of the aged we think to be natural, as when the fire quencheth itself . . . ’’ (III.x.128, ‘‘Of the Death of Young Persons in
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Especiall’’). In all cases, then, the advice is similar. ‘‘[T]his shortening of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinion: for if men did naturally live but twenty years, then we should be satisfied if they died about . . . eighteen; and yet eighteen years now are as long as eighteen years would be then’’ (Taylor, 109). ‘‘We must remember that God knoweth much better than thou and we all, when it is best for every one to die’’ (Coverdale, III.x.129). Thus, the implicit question answered by ‘‘My sinne was too much hope of thee, lou’d boy’’ is not really ‘‘why did he die?,’’ even though there are contexts available in the consolation literature that interpret death of the loved object as a punishment for sin, or as a warning against excessive attachment to creatures. The question is ‘‘why am I grieving so much?’’ in the sense of ‘‘why am I surprised by death?’’ And the answer is: my sin was a false expectation of my earthly due, literally ‘‘too much hope,’’ in this sense. Jonson’s lines point to a sin in not having allowed for God’s ultimate control over human events, to his having had a false expectation of the ‘‘natural’’ life of children, rather than to an idolatrous confusion of the heavenly and the earthly, or an ‘‘inordinate affection.’’ Thus, they carry no implication that he has loved the child whom he unabashedly and un-self-condemningly prizes in the wrong way, or too much. Lines 3 and 4 express the father’s knowledge of and determination to accept the consolatory commonplace concerning human life as a loan, given for no assured time: ‘‘Seuen yeeres tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay / Exacted by thy fate, on the iust day.’’ These lines follow logically, and indeed seem to be more fully integrated into the poem, when we read the ‘‘sinne’’ of ‘‘too much hope’’ as a sin of false expectations concerning the ‘‘natural’’ life of children. Kay is certainly right in pointing to the additional stresses in the lines, as well as to the role of a victim hinted at in the harshness of ‘‘exacted by thy fate,’’ as indicators of the emotional cost of the attitude the father knows he must take and determines to take: ‘‘and I thee pay.’’ ‘‘Exacted’’ does suggest a forced payment, and as such further strengthens the argument for the relevance of the topic of unseasonable death. As Coverdale says, the death of young persons is comparable to ‘‘unripe apples, that with violence are plucked off the tree’’ (III.ix.128). Even if these lines do not convey a complete emotional acceptance, however, Jonson’s use of the word ‘‘just’’ does imply that he
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has renewed his understanding of the terms on which heaven’s gifts are given, and it does imply his belief in Providence: ‘‘God knoweth . . . when it is best for every one to die’’ (Coverdale, III.ix.129). The classical consolations similarly stress that fortune has made no promises, but their overall implication is that it is unreasonable to expect reason from an irrational force. ‘‘Fortuitous things,’’ including children, ‘‘depend[ ] upon uncertain and fickle chance’’ (Seneca, De Consolatione ad Marciam, X.i). ‘‘[T]hings deserved and undeserved must we suffer just as [Fortune] wills’’ (ibid., X.6). In these lines, then, Jonson’s human fatherhood and his Christianity tensely co-exist. The full emotional recognition of the conflict, indeed, of the apparent inefficacy of reasonable or Christian consolation, bursts forth with ‘‘O, could I loose all father, now.’’ While the classical prose consolations, particularly as practiced by Seneca and Cicero, begin with sympathy for the loss (if any sympathy is expressed at all) and work up to precepts on the proper attitude to take, Jonson begins with as much Christian resolve as he can summon, but admits, almost despairingly, that his Christian understanding still leaves his emotions as temporal father of a dead son without a rationale or resting place. Lines 7 and 8 also admit doubts about the Christian perspective, while still trying to attain it. They do further define the falseness of hopes concerning a ‘‘natural’’ length of life. Had his son lived, what would he have gained? Sin, the world’s buffeting, and the miseries of age. Yet, these lines also convey a note of purely human, personal feeling which qualifies Jonson’s Christian understanding that his son has, as the commonplace puts it, escaped unscathed the tarnishing he would receive in the world. The phrase, ‘‘And, if no other miserie, yet age,’’ does hint at the difficulty Jonson has in conceiving of even the hypothetical sinfulness of his child. Insofar as the poem achieves a resolution at all, it must find a place for Jonson’s human fatherhood and must reconcile that fatherhood with his Christianity. Such a reconciliation cannot be achieved in Jerome’s manner, reminiscent of Augustine: ‘‘Too great affection towards one’s children is disaffection towards God’’ (St. Jerome: Letters, 53). But Jonson’s ‘‘sinne’’ has been shown not to be the extreme one—idolatry; the poem need not speak from the Augustinian position
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that all love is rightly God’s, that any love not initially referred to God is false. Jonson’s clearly maintained love of his child and high estimation of his worth need not stand in the way of resolution. In fact, while in some passages the Christian consolation literature is Augustinian, in others it explicates the idea of the gifts of God in terms strongly suggesting the connections between natural love of the human, love of God, and God’s love of man. ‘‘For as for father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, friend and lover, yea, and all other things that we have, what are they else but lent goods and free gifts of God. . . . ’’ (Coverdale, III.i.113, my italics). The implications of ‘‘free gifts’’ are clearer in the following passage in which Coverdale uses the metaphor of a man’s refusing to return a costly table which has been lent by a great lord: ‘‘Is that now my reward for lending you so costly a table, which I did of love, undeserved on your part, that ye might have commodity and pleasure thereof for a while? Yea, the more worthy the gift was that I lent you to use, the more thankful you should be unto me’’ (ibid., my italics). The very worth of the thing lent, then, is a measure of the magnitude of God’s unconstrained love for unworthy mankind. To grudge the return is a failure to understand the true nature and value of the gift, amazing even as a loan, as well as the nature of mankind, intrinsically undeserving, even of such loans. ‘‘[B]lessing[s] . . . but lent’’ (‘‘Elegie on the Lady Jane Pawlet’’) inspire not simply a just or fair attitude on the part of the receiver, as should the gifts of Fortune (cf. Seneca, De Consolatione ad Polybiam, X.2); they inspire gratitude and love of God. This Christian context of the idea of the gift, then, makes it possible to connect the worthiness of the thing received and the human love it appropriately inspires with the love of God for man and, implicitly, with the love of man for God. It is in terms of these connections between love of the human and love of the divine, rather than in terms of the attempt to mark the distinction between them, that the poem and its resolution are best explained. And it is the epitaph in lines 9–10, when considered for its implications, that addresses itself to the questions raised by the poem, and indeed answers them in human terms, which are also divine. These lines work in two ways which are intrinsically related to each other. On the one hand, Jonson humbles his estimation of his poetic creation in favor of his human creation; ‘‘his best piece of poetrie’’ gives enormous value to the
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temporal reality of his son. The very great emotional intensity of this line, the conviction it gives of Jonson’s great love of his earthly son, surely stems from his evaluation of a perishable, transitory human reality, that has in fact departed (the lines refer to the human reality), as a creation clearly surpassing ‘‘immortal verse,’’ the Renaissance assurance against oblivion and the ravages of time. Some of the classical consolations at times show a tendency to console by stressing values other than the unique value of the thing lost; they urge that the mourner turn to the writing of immortal literature, to other friends or children. There is even a certain tendency to discount the value of the thing lost, to belittle it. Children, along with wealth, honors, and so forth, are externals, ‘‘borrowed trappings’’ (Seneca, Ad Marciam, X.2); extended grief for externals is ignoble, especially to the Stoic. Even the Christians move in this direction: the death of a child brings release from a burden as well as freedom from the temptations to sin in order to provide for it (Coverdale, III.iii.118). It is with such tendencies to console by distracting the mourner from the missed object or by diminishing its value that Jonson’s consolation contrasts. But this very elevation of transitory human flesh—of nature—over potentially immortal art necessarily implies that a simultaneous step be taken; the nature of this best achievement, Jonson claims, requires that he deny all title to it. To call his son the best thing he ever made (literally, via the pun on the etymology of ‘‘poetrie’’) is to call attention to the difference between his making of children and his making of poems (even if both are not ultimately his doing alone). Insofar as he did make his son, he is the best thing he ever made. But in what sense can he have, literally, created him? What is it, as the poem has asked all along, to be biologically related, to be a ‘‘father’’? ‘‘We do not call parents the creators of men; nor farmers the creators of corn—although it is by the outward application of their actions that the goodness of God operates within for the creating these things. . . . ’’ If his son is much more valuable and perfect than any creation of his own art, finally that can only be because what he is comparing to man’s art is God’s. God writes in things, not words. The epitaph communicates Jonson’s intense earthly love of his child, his great sense of its worth, and at the very same time allows for only one source of that worth, which merits so great a human love, for only one source of all ‘‘free gifts’’ given out of ‘‘undeserved’’ and immeasurable love.
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The parent’s sense of the unsurpassable value of a human creation is necessarily a sense of powers beyond his control. The two-line epitaph embodies the emotional realization of the attitude Jonson willed to take in lines 3 and 4 when he spoke of his son as something lent to him, not his to claim. It is here that the resolution of the dilemma of the father and Christian begins. It is human love for the human child that leads to an acceptance of the will of the God who alone can create so valuable a gift. When we look at the concluding lines of the poem, we face a genuine ambiguity concerning the referent of ‘‘for whose sake’’ in line 11. If the antecedent of ‘‘whose’’ is Ben Jonson (as only Fike suggests), we do have the advantage of no change in referent from ‘‘whose’’ to the following ‘‘his’’ and ‘‘he,’’ as well as the advantage of the apparent plausibility of vows taken for the sake of Ben Jonson rather than for the sake of his son. We may then understand that Jonson now vows to amend his own life by vowing to make parental love rest on an understanding of the nature of God’s gifts. His understanding and acceptance, achieved through love, may allow him to live in accordance with God’s will in the future, that is, more readily to accept and prepare for God’s ultimate control of human events. However, the ambiguity is indeed genuine. It is also plausible that the referent of ‘‘whose’’ is the entire phrase ‘‘BEN. IONSON his best piece of poetrie,’’ that is, his son. Just as the epitaph pays tribute to ‘‘his best piece of poetrie,’’ even though that human creation no longer exists, so the vows may be understood as a tribute to the departed, as vows taken ‘‘for his son’’ in the sense of ‘‘for the memory of his son.’’ Although his vows seem to apply to the future (‘‘henceforth,’’ ‘‘may never’’) and to other experiences with loved things, they may still be understood to resolve the problem of the place of his fatherly affections in relation to his religious beliefs. They make possible the appropriate attitude towards his son’s memory. He has already emotionally realized the sense in which his son is not his achievement, not something he owns which may please him as something he has made might please him, but a loving gift of God which inspires love both for the child and for God; now he must love the child accordingly. However we understand the grammar, the nature of the vow itself actually makes it serve both Jonson and the memory of his son. The difference between ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘liking too
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much’’ in the last line is not the difference between an appropriate affection stopping short of idolatry that is less than one’s love for God, and an inappropriate affection that results from loving humans as one should love only God. The emphasis falls on love; no reservations are expressed about it; it is inevitable. Rather, what ‘‘love’’ means is human love, the love of parents for children, which is inevitable, but can be extended and continues to exist, even for a dead child (the father is not ‘‘lost’’ or ‘‘loosed’’), because the love of that child is recognized as an appropriate response to a worthy gift of God. This is a love which can transcend the child’s death, because it is, at its best, unselfish, concerned with the child’s ultimate welfare. It is not the concern of the poem to distinguish such love from ‘‘true love’’ or love ‘‘in God.’’ The experience of human love, the tremendous valuation of the human child as best earthly creation, and even the sense of loss that re-confirms value, need not be suppressed. They themselves lead to an understanding of transcendent love, that is, the Creator’s love for unworthy mankind, expressed in the form of such valuable gifts. That understanding makes possible human transcendent love: love of God, and love of the child as soul, not earthly creation. In contrast with this, ‘‘liking too much’’ simply represents an attitude more earth-centered and selfish, an attitude associated with the thought of the child as a human creation that merely pleases its earthly maker, an attitude incapable of accepting loss. The poem concerns the difference between an expanded human love that avoids ‘‘liking too much’’ and a limited human love that does not; it does not concern the difference between love of children and love of God. We may now more fully understand the sense in which Jonson’s vows are made for the sake of his son. The classical consolations stress that memory allows things once possessed to remain with one indefinitely, that love continues to exist in spite of the loss of the loved one when that love takes into account the departed’s true value and welfare and the fact that he would not want one to grieve. The state of mind permitting peaceful and pleasant contemplation is completely antithetical to the urge to excessive grief. The resolve embodied in Jonson’s vows will make it possible for the father to exist in a new form, to be able to contemplate and cherish the memory of his son because it is not painful to him. And the memory
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will not be painful because the understanding and acceptance of his son’s true welfare are achieved through his love and high valuation of his son— understood in their proper context—not in spite of his love for his son. True parental love continues to exist, but is transformed; it may overcome the broken spirit which is the first reaction to the loss of its temporal object. Jeremy Taylor comments on those whose spirits are broken: ‘‘This is true in many, but this is not love to the dead, but to themselves; for they miss what they had flattered themselves into by hope and opinion; and if it were kindness to the dead, they may consider that, since we hope he is gone to God and to rest, it is an ill expression of our love to them that we weep for their good fortune’’ (108). There may seem to be a resemblance, even in this passage, to that reading which stresses false hopes, in the sense of idolatry. But recall that Taylor goes on to categorize the idea that unseasonable death is an ‘‘evil’’ as ‘‘wholly depending upon opinion,’’ that is, a false expectation of the ‘‘natural’’ life of children; he makes no mention of anything that can be construed as idolatry. The point is that this passage, like Jonson’s poem, concerns the continuation and extension of human love in a divine framework, not the sharp distinction of love of the human and love of the divine. It is a matter of loving the human in accordance with its ultimately divine source, not of avoiding love for the human because it is not divine. Insofar as a calming of emotion is achieved in Jonson’s poem, it is not arrived at through the mere intellectual acceptance of the supremacy of transcendent or non-earthly values, as the detailed critical treatments suggest; the conflict between the speaker’s emotions as a father and his desire for the appropriate Christian resolve is the subject or problem of the poem. Rather, the consolation is achieved through love, of his temporal son, of his son as God’s gift, of his son returned to his Creator, and implicitly of the Creator. This reading has the advantage of providing a bridge between the temporal and the transcendent, rather than demanding the rejection of one for the other. Thus, it fully takes into account the father’s intense love of his human child, about which the poem makes no apologies, as an integral part of its total meaning. Source: J Z. Kronenfeld, ‘‘The Father Found: Consolation Achieved Through Love in Ben Jonson’s ‘On My First Sonne,’’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 75, No. 1, Winter 1978, pp. 64–84.
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SOURCES Crawford, Patricia M., and Laura Gowing, eds., Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England, Routledge, 2000. Evans, Robert C., ‘‘Ben Jonson,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, 1st ser., edited by M. Thomas Hester, Gale Research, 1992, pp. 182–212. ‘‘Great Plague of London,’’ in Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2009, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/243560/Great-Plague-of-London (accessed July 25, 2009). Haralson, Eric, ‘‘Manly Tears: Men’s Elegies for Children in Nineteenth-Century American Culture,’’ in Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S., edited by Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis, Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 88–123. Jonson, Ben, ‘‘On My First Son,’’ in English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson, 2nd ed., edited by John Williams, The University of Arkansas Press, 1990 Kelly, John, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, HarperCollins, 2005. Loxley, James, The Complete Critical Guide to Ben Jonson, Routledge, 2001. Marotti, Arthur F., ‘‘All About Jonson’s Poetry,’’ in ELH, Vol. 39, No. 2, June 1972, pp. 208–37. Miller, David Lee, ‘‘Writing the Specular Son: Jonson, Freud, Lacan, and the (K)not of Masculinity,’’ in Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, edited by Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz, Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 233–61. Moote, A. Lloyd, and Dorothy C. Moote, The Great Plague: The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, pp. 1-50. Newstok, Scott L., ‘‘Elegies Ending ‘Here’: The Poetics of Epitaphic Closure,’’ in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2006, pp. 75–100. Riggs, David, Ben Jonson: A Life, Harvard University Press, 1989. Salgado, Gamini, ‘‘Ben Jonson: Overview,’’ in Reference Guide to English Literature, 2nd ed., edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press, 1991. Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, edited by Susanne L. Wofford, Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994. ———, ‘‘My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun: Sonnet 130,’’ http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prm MID/15557 (accessed August 17, 2009). Skelton, John, ‘‘Upon a Dead Man’s Head,’’ in English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson, edited by John Williams, 2nd ed., University of Arkansas Press, 1990, pp. xi–xxxv.
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Summers, Claude J., and Ted-Larry Pebworth, ‘‘Chapter Five: The Poetry,’’ in Ben Jonson, Twayne Publishers, 1979, pp. 138–57.
Houlbrooke provides a clear and interesting historical context for the thematic concerns of Jonson’s ‘‘On My First Son.’’
Trimpi, Wesley, Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style, Stanford University Press, 1962, pp. 180–85.
Jonson, Ben, Volpone and Other Plays, edited by Michael Jamieson, Penguin, 2004. Jonson’s satiric plays offer a vivid contrast to poems such as ‘‘On My First Son’’ and allow the student to appreciate the full range of the writer’s talent.
Williams, John, ed., Preface to English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson, 2nd ed., University of Arkansas Press, 1990, pp. xi–xxxv.
FURTHER READING Harp, Richard, and Stanley Stewart, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, Cambridge University Press, 2001. This is a useful collection of articles ranging from the historical background of Jonson’ work to insightful critical analyses. Houlbrooke, Ralph A., Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750, Clarendon Press, 1998.
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Maclean, Hugh, Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, W. W. Norton, 1975. Maclean offers a collection of Johnson’s work along with that of poets who came to be known as the ‘‘Sons of Ben’’ and provides a useful historical introduction. Martin, Randall, ed., Women Writers in Renaissance England, Longman, 1997. This book is an anthology of writings by female contemporaries of Jonson. Their works includes elegies, epistles, poems, and prose, providing an interesting contrast with Jonson’s work.
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Shoulders Naomi Shihab Nye had been publishing poetry for fourteen years before ‘‘Shoulders’’ appeared in the 1994 collection Red Suitcase. Like most of her poetry, ‘‘Shoulders’’ presents a slice of life in which an everyday, simple act—in this case, a man carrying his son on his shoulders across a street—becomes a metaphor for something much larger than itself.
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE 1994
Unlike some poets, Nye seeks to say exactly what she means so that the reader understands her message precisely. Her themes of love and people caring for each other are understood in virtually any culture, a fact that pleases Nye since she is herself a product of two cultures, Palestinian and American. ‘‘Shoulders’’ is immediately accessible and can be understood on a first reading, but closer examination is also rewarding. A second reading reveals carefully chosen words that paint for the mind’s eye a picture rich in color, sound, and texture. The simplicity of the poem’s form and meaning are a result of the care with which Nye constructed this work. Because of its message of human kindness and caring, ‘‘Shoulders’’ has appeared in the anthology In the Arms of Words: Poetry for Disaster Relief (2005/2006), the proceeds of which are donated to an international relief fund.
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Nye has continued to publish collections of poetry for adults and children, as well as picture books, throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Red Suitcase, which contains the poem ‘‘Shoulders,’’ was published in 1994. Her work has earned numerous awards, including four prestigious Pushcart Prizes. The Pushcart Prize is the most honored literary project in America, and many famous authors were first recognized by it: John Irving, Raymond Carver, and Tim O’Brien, among others. Nye was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998. The money from this award allowed her to teach less and write more. In addition to writing poetry and children’s picture books, Nye has published essays in a variety of periodicals, including Atlantic, Atlanta Review, and Ploughshares. She has edited several poetry anthologies, including the award-winning This Same Sky. Her 2002 poetry collection, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry.
Naomi Shihab Nye (Reproduced by permission)
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 12, 1952. Her journalist father was Palestinian, and her mother was a Swiss-German American teacher. With them and her brother, she spent her high school years in Jerusalem and in San Antonio, Texas. A self-proclaimed poet since the age of six, Nye eventually earned her bachelor of arts degree in English and world religions from Trinity University in San Antonio, the city she calls home. She used her degree to land several teaching jobs over the years. Nye has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio. Nye’s first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, was published in 1980. Her interest in exploring the differences and similarities between various cultures was evident in this first collection, and themes of multiculturalism have continued to flow through her work. Nye won the Voertman Poetry Prize for this collection, and she won it again for her third poetry collection, Hugging the Jukebox, two years later.
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Nye’s work has been featured on National Public Radio, and she has been included on two Public Broadcasting System (PBS) poetry specials, The Language of Life with Bill Moyers and The United States of Poetry. She has also appeared on the PBS show NOW with Bill Moyers. Nye’s love of language translates into song as well. She is a songwriter and folk singer who considers poetry and songs to be cousins. In addition to writing, Nye is active in promoting international goodwill through the arts. In that capacity, she has traveled to the Middle East and Asia as a representative of the United States Information Agency (USIA) three times. The function of the USIA was, in part, to advocate America’s official policies overseas, in language and terms that were meaningful to those specific cultures. The USIA was abolished in 1999, when most of its functions were transferred to the Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy. Nye has written and edited more than twenty volumes of poetry and fiction. For more than thirty years, she has conducted writing workshops in schools, an activity she considers food for writing. In an interview with Rachel Barenblat at Pif magazine, Nye explains, ‘‘Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out—helping others move inward—it is an honor to be with others in the spirit of writing and encouragement.’’
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POEM SUMMARY Lines 1–5 In the first lines of ‘‘Shoulders,’’ Nye gives the reader a focal point: a father carrying his sleeping son on his shoulder in the rain. He looks both ways and carefully crosses the street. The reader immediately knows he is a gentle and careful father, protective of his son. He is aware of both what he can and cannot see, and he will let no harm come to his boy. Readers are focused on the father.
territory; the real message of the poem lies ahead. Whereas lines 1–12 make careful use of imagery and sound so that the tone is almost a whisper, lines 13–18 do not use either. Nye uses abrupt words and hard consonant sounds such as t and d. In doing so, she startles the reader out of the lull that she creates in the previous twelve lines, as if to say ‘‘Wake up!’’
THEMES Lines 6–9 The reader’s attention shifts to the child. The boy is the most precious cargo in the world, yet nowhere is he obviously marked as such. This section of the poem reflects Nye’s belief in the value of children, as well as the father’s feeling. The reader is again told beyond doubt that the child is both precious and fragile.
Lines 10–12 In writing about Nye for The Progressive, journalist Robert Hirschfield says her poetry is characterized by a ‘‘deep listening quality.’’ The center section of ‘‘Shoulders’’ is an illustration of this quality. In lines 10–12, Nye brings the man and boy together in the reader’s eye as she blends senses: The father hears his son’s breathing. The boy hums as he dreams. The reader can almost hear as well as see these three lines because Nye has infused them with a sensual quality.
Lines 13–18 A major shift occurs in these final lines as Nye writes in first person and thereby draws the reader into the scene she has created. The man is no longer just one man, nor is his son just one son. They represent every individual in the world. Nye’s core message appears in this section: People must be willing to go out of their way to help one another or they cannot survive. Without human kindness, life’s journey will be long and fraught with one obstacle after another. Reaching out to help and love each other is, in ‘‘Shoulders,’’ what makes life worth living. More than that, it makes life possible. Nye relies on literary technique to convey this message. The tone of the poem changes at line 13, making the reader aware that this is new
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Universal Love Much of Nye’s poetry is about humanitarianism and people caring for one another. ‘‘Shoulders’’ is no exception. A father carries his son across the street. He looks both ways, twice. He is very careful to get his boy safely to the other side. In lines 13–16, Nye says that people must be willing to care for and protect one another when such benevolence is required because there will always be hardship, and life’s journey is long. The poem is only eighteen lines long, yet within that framework Nye has made her point clear: Life is not just about the individual’s needs and desires. It is about caring for others, going out of one’s way to see that they are protected and their needs are met.
Trust The father in the poem has been entrusted with his son’s care. The small boy knows he is in good hands. He is comfortable enough to fall asleep, even as rain falls upon him. Nye indicates the boy’s breathing is regular, a hum. It is an easy sleep, deep enough that he dreams. His father, knowing he is responsible for caring for his son, protects him from splashes, from traffic, and from danger. Knowing his son is fragile and needs the father in order to grow up, the father faces the rain, ignoring his own comfort, and focuses on getting his son to safety and warmth. He will do this thousands of times throughout the boy’s life, if not literally, then figuratively. Nye underscores this theme of trust in her word choice. She emphasizes the fragility and vulnerability of the child, using words that would apply to something of value that is being sent out into the world. That value is ascribed to the child in the poem, and lines 4 and 5 suggest the father’s awareness of the value as well as his son’s trust in him.
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Find other poems written by Nye. Choose one that addresses the same themes as ‘‘Shoulders,’’ but in a different way. In an essay, compare and contrast the two poems, describing their similarities and differences. Draw or paint a picture of what you see when you read ‘‘Shoulders.’’ Choose colors that reflect or represent the feelings you get from the poem. Explain your selections in a short essay on the back of the picture. Poetry is just one form of art; music is another. If you play a musical instrument, write a tune to accompany this poem. What is the tone of the music? Is it fast paced or slow paced? Do you hear it being played solo, or by a larger musical group? Play the song for the class. Read the Robert Frost poem ‘‘The Road Not Taken.’’ Compare his road to the one Nye describes in ‘‘Shoulders.’’ How do they differ? How are they similar? Write your own poem using the road as a symbol for your life. Using the Internet, research a culture other than your own. Familiarize yourself with elements of its language, customs, social norms, and values. Then write a poem about your own life using techniques that would allow a person from that culture to identify with your poem’s theme(s). For example, you could use dialect or slang from that culture in your poem to help the reader understand your message. Read Nye’s young-adult novel Habibi. Pay special attention to the imagery used in descriptions of Jerusalem. Following Nye’s lead, choose a place you have been to and describe it in an essay using vivid imagery.
Individual Responsibility A single person not only can but must make a difference. This is a strong message in Nye’s poem. It is up to each person to take responsibility
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for the well-being of others. The boy is tired; he is fragile, and so the father helps him and protects him. Nye says if people are not willing to reach out and give of themselves, no one will survive. Throughout her career, Nye has attempted to use poetry as a means of cross-cultural communication. While recognizing the needs and rights of individuals in society, her poetry— ‘‘Shoulders’’ included—stresses the idea that all concerns are universal. In this instance, all children are important and fragile. They must be handled with care on an individual basis, as well as at a societal level. In lines 13–16, Nye switches from singular pronouns to plural, applying the individual example to all of us.
STYLE Symbolism Nye’s poem is a word picture of one very brief moment in time: A father carries his son across a street to safety. But everything in that slice of life is representative or symbolic of something bigger. The father is Everyman (the representative of humankind in medieval morality plays). He is every person in the world, just as his son is every child or weaker person in need of human kindness. The act of carrying the boy across the street is symbolic of any act of kindness, be it carrying someone, caring for someone in time of sickness, teaching a child a new skill, or anything else. The road in this poem is life’s journey, which Nye is saying will always be wide, never easy, and not something one can travel alone. The rain symbolizes the hardship and obstacles every person faces in life. There will always be rain; there will always be hardship.
Free Verse ‘‘Shoulders’’ is written as free verse: It does not rhyme, and there is no consistent meter or rhythmic pattern. By choosing to write the poem in this style, Nye allows herself and the reader to focus on language rather than form as a way to understand the poem’s meaning without being preoccupied with rhythm or line length. Instead, she uses specific words to make the reader feel the scene she is portraying.
Varied Points of View ‘‘Shoulders’’ begins with the third-person point of view. Nye tells the reader what is happening. In line 13, she switches to first person plural,
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Father and son (Image copyright Vadim Ponomarenko, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
thereby involving the reader and herself in the scene. By implementing two points of view, she is forcing the reader not only to accept what she is saying but to claim ownership, in a way. She is saying, in effect, ‘‘Here’s how it is. If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’’ The reader is no longer watching the scene unfold, but is actually participating in it.
Synesthesia Synesthesia is a condition in which one’s senses are blended. For example, music has both a sound and a color associated with it. Food has a taste and a color. For some synesthetes, every letter of the alphabet appears in a particular color. Nye blends the senses in her poem. The man uses sight to look up and down the street. He hears his son’s breathing and feels the rain falling. By incorporating several of the senses, the reader has a vivid image of the father carrying the son across the road.
Poetry as Conversation In an interview with Teri Lesesne for Teacher Librarian, Nye explains that ‘‘poetry is the
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closest genre to the way we think, in images with leaping connections, metaphorically, sometimes in fragments. We should feel very at home with it.’’ Her understanding of poetry as a way of seeing and saying something is what makes her poems accessible. ‘‘Shoulders’’ uses no difficult words that must be looked up in a dictionary to understand. There is no rhyme or technical format. Nothing about the poem is forced. Each line just is what it is, in tone and in length. It is a perfect reflection of what Nye means when she describes poetry as the closest genre to the way people think.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Multiculturalism ‘‘Shoulders’’ was written in 1994, when multiculturalism (the idea that different cultures can peacefully coexist) was at the forefront of social and academic thought. One of the poem’s themes, universal love, hinges on the idea that humans must be willing to help anyone, anywhere in the
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world, if they are to survive together as a species. Unsaid but implied is the idea that differences of any kind do not matter. The poem, however, is timeless. The scene Nye depicts could take place anywhere in the world, at any given time. This ambiguity is another facet of multicultural thought.
International Discord Because Nye is both Palestinian and American, she grew up with an acute sense of the differences between the two cultures. Her poetry became a way to bridge the gaps between cultures, generations, and races. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, she was the visiting poet at a school in Dallas, Texas. She brought to class some poems written by Iraqi poets. In a 2005 interview with Bryan Woolley of the Dallas Morning News, Nye described the experience. The poems were not about war but about fathers and children, mothers and their daughters. ‘‘And kids were saying things like, ‘Gee, I never thought about there being children in Iraq.’’’ Hearing that response, Nye feels those poems made a difference. In large part because of the Gulf War and the ongoing violent struggles against apartheid (social policy of legal, economic, and political discrimination against non-whites) in South Africa until 1994, cultural and ethnic conflict were uppermost in people’s minds in the early 1990s despite the fact that America was experiencing its own serious economic recession. Nye’s 1994 poetry collection, Red Suitcase, included poems depicting life in all its glory and ugliness. The poems in Red Suitcase include ‘‘How Palestinians Keep Warm,’’‘‘Someone Is Standing on the Roof of the World,’’ and ‘‘Holy Land.’’ The poem ‘‘For the 500th Dead Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh,’’ is about a thirteen-yearold girl who was murdered at gunpoint simply because she was Palestinian. In the poem ‘‘Jerusalem,’’ Nye writes about a place in her brain where hate is not allowed to grow. ‘‘Shoulders’’ that was chosen to end the book. Without depicting a specific place or time, it is a perfect poem to wrap up a collection that has focused a tender eye on the uselessness of discord and disruption, death and hate, war and exile. It is a poem of hope, one that beseeches the reader not only to care, but to act on that feeling. Written in a time of international
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upheaval and local uncertainty, ‘‘Shoulders’’ carries the rest of the book on its back.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Nye is regarded as one of the leading female poets of her generation in the American Southwest. So highly respected is her work that she was invited to read at the Library of Congress and the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 1995, veteran journalist Bill Moyers shone a spotlight on Nye when he made her the first featured poet of his new PBS poetry series The Language of Life. A hectic schedule of speaking engagements and book tours followed for the Texas-based poet. Her poem ‘‘Shoulders’’ was included in an anthology of poetry titled In the Arms of Words: Poetry for Disaster Relief (2005/2006). All of the proceeds from the sales of the book went directly to AmeriCares, an international relief organization. Because of Nye’s multicultural heritage, much of her work (poetry, prose, and lyrics) explores race relations in terms of finding peace and making room for differences. ‘‘Shoulders’’ is one of her rare pieces that does not concern itself with a multicultural theme. The man and child featured in the poem could be of any race; it simply does not matter. By not specifying ethnicity or race, Nye has made a pointed choice to portray the father and son as anyone and everyone. The bulk of Nye’s poetry brings an energy to local life and daily events, small moments that, when strung together, make up a life. ‘‘Shoulders’’ does just that as it focuses on a father and son crossing the street. In her essay for The Women’s Review of Books, journalist Alison Townsend judges the collection of poetry in Red Suitcase to be an ‘‘intersection of private and public history.’’ She interprets Nye’s focus to be on ‘‘the contribution individual histories make to world history’’ and points to ‘‘Shoulders’’ as the poem that makes that point best. Although Nye’s poetry appeals to people because of its accessibility and simplicity and its refusal to be esoteric or too intellectual, a review in Publishers Weekly found the book—and ‘‘Shoulders’’ in particular—lacking. ‘‘The final poem strains to carry both a child and the book on its back. . . . Nye’s strength is her ability to express subtle emotions; weightier issues overwhelm her small, clear voice.’’
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1990s: This decade sees the rise of the Spoken Word movement. Although poetry has always been an oral art form, the invention of the printing press made publishing poetry more immediately important than reciting it. There was a renewed interest in oral poetry in the 1960s, as there is again in the 1990s. Concurrent with this most recent interest in oral poetry is the explosion of the rap music scene. Technically speaking, rap is considered a form of spoken word. In an interview with Sharif S. Elmusa of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poets, Nye expresses an appreciation for the way rap music plays with words. Elmusa agrees and explains the role of rap in trying to make poetry vital for his son: ‘‘I encouraged him to listen because I liked the way rappers played with words. Rap seemed like the next-best thing to poetry.’’ Today: At the turn of the twenty-first century, poetry as it is generally written and read is ready for something new. John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, explains in an article for Poetry Magazine that a new kind of poetry is necessary ‘‘because the way poets have learned to write no longer captures the way things are. . . . The art form is no longer equal to the reality around it.’’ Poetry is, generally speaking, losing its audience as other art forms come to the forefront. Poets strive to bring their art to a younger audience. 1990s: Multiculturalism—the idea that varied cultures can coexist peacefully and in equality—reaches its zenith in the 1990s. Everything from literature to curriculum to politics includes a multicultural aspect. For Nye, who is both Palestinian and American, multiculturalism is at the heart of her
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poetry. She uses that poetry to try to bridge cultural gaps and bring together people from all walks of life. Today: The terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and Washington, D.C.’s Pentagon building in 2001 deal a serious blow to the idea of multiculturalism in America. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, society struggles to maintain respect for the individual in society while finding acceptance and tolerance for social groups organized around culture, gender, nationality, race, and other factors.
1990s: The early years of the decade are ones of economic strain in America as the Persian Gulf War is fought, oil prices and the federal budget deficit increase, and America’s gross national product falls. Unemployment is high, and many families struggle just to keep from losing their homes. Experts cite the resulting increase in adult stress levels as a primary influence on the increase in child abuse and substance use. Nye’s poem is a reminder that children are precious and need to be nurtured. Today: America’s economy is once again turbulent. The federal government has intervened in business by financially helping major companies, such as banks and automobile manufacturers, to keep them from going bankrupt. Unemployment is high, and homes across the country are going into foreclosure, leaving millions homeless and jobless. As adults frantically worry how to live from one paycheck to the next, the needs of children are easily overlooked. Nye’s poem, with its message of responsibility, perhaps rings even more true today than it did when it was written.
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Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman praises Nye’s poetry in general. In 2005, she likened Nye’s poetic collections to water ‘‘because her poems are clear, flowing, essential, and capable of not only keeping one afloat but also slipping into even the most tightly closed corner of her mind.’’ Nye expresses the philosophy that poetry can bridge cultural gaps by providing details because people are people, regardless of background. ‘‘My poems simply try to remember that,’’ she explains in an interview for Writing! magazine. ‘‘Poems respect details. Hopefully, those details can help us enter one another’s worlds and imagine them.’’
CRITICISM Rebecca Valentine Valentine is a freelance writer and editor who holds a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis on literary analysis. In this essay, she considers Nye’s poem ‘‘Shoulders’’ in terms of its musical devices. In addition to being a poet, Nye is a songwriter and singer. In her poem ‘‘Shoulders,’’ Nye employs several musical devices to develop the tone and message of her words. Upon a first read, Nye’s poem seems to be very simple—little more than a thought jotted down on paper. But even the simplest poems are created with purpose. In ‘‘Shoulders,’’ Nye uses her songwriting techniques and knowledge to paint a word picture whose meaning relies as much on hearing as it does on understanding the words. Throughout the first twelve lines, Nye uses soft consonants and blends. The words are quiet, and their sounds are soothing. Especially if read aloud, these lines of poetry give the reader a sense of tranquility. That peaceful feeling is abruptly and starkly broken beginning with line 13. From that point on, Nye uses words with hard consonant sounds such as t, g, and r. These sounds are more guttural; they do not flow softly off the tongue. Considered in contrast to the preceding twelve lines, the harsh sounds of lines 13–18 are startling. Along with the shift to hard consonants comes a change to short words. Throughout the first twelve lines, Nye uses multisyllabic words more often. Lines 13–18 rely primarily on monosyllabic words to reinforce their message. Of a total of thirty-five words in those lines, twenty-
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seven have just one syllable. The sound of these words being read can be called staccato. Their sound is rapid and hard, much like the sound of an automatic weapon being fired. This staccato sound is unpleasant, especially after the lull of the longer, softer words in the first twelve lines. Nye’s message—we will perish if we cannot help one another—is underscored by her word choice. It is an urgent message, one not to be ignored. The reader has no choice but to notice it because Nye has made it blare out, like a car horn in the solitude of night. Consonance is another musical device used in the construction of ‘‘Shoulders.’’ Consonance is the repetition of the same sound in short succession. Within the first five lines, Nye uses the soft blend sh three times. In a similar vein, she uses th twice in a three-word span. In lines 10–12, the reader hears the sound h five times. The soft sound of that consonant is almost like a lullaby, and readers let down their guard down just as Nye is about to assault them with the core message of her poem. Nye foregoes the use of rhyme in her poem. Rhyming tends to give a poem a more lighthearted and frivolous quality. Nye’s tone in ‘‘Shoulders’’ is serious, almost reverent. She indicates her attitude toward the subject—father and son—with words denoting vulnerability and fragility. Rhyming has no place in this particular poem. An alternative to rhyme is assonance, a technique in which vowel sounds are repeated in neighboring words. This stylistic choice adds to the flow of a poem or song. Lines 10 and 11 of ‘‘Shoulders’’ use the long ea sound four times in the scope of fourteen words. As she does with consonance, Nye uses assonance in this passage directly preceding her message, highlighting that message and making it all the more agitating. Nye’s poetry, including ‘‘Shoulders,’’ is not difficult to understand. But the reason for this is not because it is basic or simplified. Nye has managed to fuse her musical sensibility into her poetry. Good music and good poetry share a dynamic that makes them intriguing and meaningful to both read and hear. Nye’s poetry shines because it can be felt—by the brain, the heart, and the ear. It is a sensual experience built by an artist who appreciates her craft as much as her end product. Booklist contributor Pat Monaghan said it well in a review of Red Suitcase: ‘‘Nye is a fluid poet, and her poems are also full
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
Nye’s A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (2005) is a collection of poetry geared toward teenage girls. The poems touch on everyday experiences of girls from all cultures.
The 2001 young-adult novel A Step From Heaven is author An Na’s story of a Korean girl who emigrates to California when she is just four years old. The cultural differences set Young Ju’s family on a path of disintegration and force the family to find a way to blend the old with the new. Alan Sitomer and Michael Cirelli’s 2004 interactive workbook titled Hip-Hop Poetry and the Classics compares contemporary hip-hop with more traditional poetry and shows students the two are not so different after all. The authors provide in-depth analysis of poetic literary devices, writing activities, and more. Written for grades seven and up, You Hear Me?: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys is a collection of poetry edited by Betsy Franco
and published in 2001. Some explicit themes, such as drugs, AIDS, and sex, give this book a more raw urgency than found in the average young-adult work, as its poems give voice to the hopes and fears of young men from a variety of cultures.
Paint Me As I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps (2003) is a collection of poems written by disadvantaged youth. WritersCorps is a program that allows established poets to share their skills and motivation techniques with at-risk youth. Poet Nikki Giovanni provides the foreword to this collection edited by Bill Aguado and Richard Newirth.
Jaime R. Wood’s Living Voices: Multicultural Poetry in the Middle School Classroom (2006) introduces students to a form of literature that often causes anxiety in young readers. The book contains step-by-step lesson plans and provides examples of student writing. A chapter of accessible resources is included at the end.
of the urgency of spoken language. Her direct, unadorned vocabulary serves her well.’’
in 1948. He put down roots in St. Louis, Missouri, where, in 1952, Naomi Shihab was born.
Source: Rebecca Valentine, Critical Essay on ‘‘Shoulders,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
‘‘My first images of Palestine were the thin blue air-letter sheets that he would mail to Palestine, then receive in the mail,’’ his daughter recently recalled. ‘‘How the light would come through those translucent pages! There was something magical about words that had travelled so far.’’
Robert Hirschfield In the following article, Hirschfield examines how Nye’s Palestinian background has influenced her life and poetry. Why are we so monumentally slow? Soldiers stalk a pharmacy: big guns, little pills. If you tilt your head just slightly It’s ridiculous. The words are those of Naomi Shihab Nye, from her poem ‘‘Jerusalem.’’ Her father, a middle-class Palestinian from Jerusalem, lost his home and everything he owned
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The author of many books of poetry and young adult fiction, Nye was a National Book Award finalist for 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of The Middle East, and twice has won the Jane Adams Children’s Book Award. One of her young-adult novels, Habibi (available through the AET book club as is her Space Between Our Footsteps), is based on her experiences as a teenager in the West Bank in the mid-1960s, when her father decided to return to live in his
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native land. (The outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967 sent him back to America to stay.) ‘‘I had a rebellious streak, as teenagers have,’’ Nye explained. ‘‘I had no patience at all with the conservative Old World culture, yet I loved how tuned-in my grandmother and cousins were to every little detail of daily life. So very much like poetry.’’ Nye has been back many times since then. Like any ordinary Palestinian—even one from San Antonio, Texas, where she now lives with her family the poet is in possession of a hidden cargo of occupation horror stories. ‘‘I was sitting once with my grandmother, when she was about 103, and my child was with me,’’ she told the Washington Report. ‘‘Suddenly, bursting into the house, was the son of my cousin. The Israelis broke into his house while he was in the shower and brutally beat the boy. Both his eyes were blackening. He said, ‘They think I know a boy who threw some stones last week, but I don’t know him.’ ‘‘I sat there thinking, If someone beat up my son, what would I be inclined to do?’’ Other times, while walking in her grandmother’s village with old Palestinian men, she would find Israeli guns pointed at them. ‘‘I would say in English to the soldiers, ‘We are not fighting you. We are just out for an evening walk. Why are you doing this?’’’ Nye said. ‘‘They would be furious, and ask to see my passport.’’ Her contact with Jews, since her teens, has mainly been as friends. There was their shared Semitic background, their shared conflict— bloodlines and bloodshed. ‘‘There is a scene in Habibi, at the dinner table,’’ Nye said, ‘‘where the girl asks her father, ‘Is this irrevocable? Do we all have to fight forever? Or is it just that we fight the way families fight?’’’ The poet writes about the Southwest, a lost parrot, an old love, Mother Teresa and other subjects, as well as about Palestine and the Palestinians. She sees her words as her contribution to Palestinian resistance. ‘‘Many people would say that words do nothing,’’ she noted. ‘‘Others, like myself, believe that language, whether it be poetry, like [Mahmoud] Darwish’s poetry, or song, can fortify and rejuvenate the spirit.’’
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What poetry can do, Nye believes, is to transport people ‘‘across the gap,’’ beyond tribal borders. Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch are long-time residents in her pantheon of poets who matter. ‘‘Presence and truth’’ were the checkpoints they had to pass through to get there. Nye closely monitors the pollution of political language in America. ‘‘George Bush said, when Hamas won the election: ‘You cannot be a partner in peace if you’ve got an armed wing.’ He should talk!’’ his fellow Texan said. ‘‘He has an armed wing, an armed tail feather, and another armed wing. He has every armed wing there is.’’ As an Arab-American, Sept. 11—and the reaction to Sept. 11—wounded her two hearts (three, if you count Darwish’s ‘‘land of words’’ as a third body). ‘‘9/11 was horrific,’’ Nye stated. ‘‘I think all the civilian deaths in Iraq are equally horrific. I think the unspoken, undescribed oppression of Palestinians for 58 years is horrific. I think the suicide bombings of Israel are horrific.’’ In her open letter ‘‘To Any Would-Be Terrorists,’’ written after 9/11, Nye begins by saying how very much she hates using the word ‘‘terrorists.’’ ‘‘Do you know how hard some of us have worked to get rid of that word, to deny its instant connection to the Middle East?’’ she writes. ‘‘And now look. Look what extra work we have. Not only did your colleagues kill thousands of innocent, international people in those buildings and scar their families forever, they wounded a huge community of people in the Middle East, in the United States and all over the world. If that’s what they wanted to do, please know their mission was a terrible success, and you can stop now.’’ A scolding mother, she mentions her own American mother, who has worked so hard in her life to undo people’s poisonous stereotypes about Arabs. In tones of an exhausted friend, Nye ends her letter by saying, ‘‘We will all die soon enough. Why not take the short time we have on this delicate planet and figure out some really interesting things we might do together? I promise you, God would be happier.’’ She suggests they read Rumi, even American poetry, and quotes the Arab-American writer Dr. Salma Jayyusi: ‘‘If we read one another, we won’t kill one another.’’
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Nye detects an edge of rage in some of her own post-9/11 poetry. It doesn’t please her. She likens poetry to a lever that keeps trying to flip up a lid so one may discover what lies beneath it. Rage, she knows, kills wonder. Source: Robert Hirschfield, ‘‘Naomi Shihab Nye: Portrait of a Palestinian-American Poet,’’ in Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 6, August 2006, pp. 73–74.
MY GOALS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TO MAKE WONDERFUL VOICES AVAILABLE TO MORE READERS, TO PROMOTE POEMS OF HUMANITY AND INTELLIGENCE THAT EXTEND AND CONNECT US ALL AS HUMAN BEINGS, TO ENLARGE READERS’
Joy Castro
HORIZONS—INCLUDING MY OWN, AS I WORK ON THE
In the following interview with Castro, Nye discusses her writing background, politics in poetry, and multicultural literature.
BOOKS—AND TO HELP CONNECT PEOPLE.’’
Naomi Shihab Nye is best known for her six volumes of what William Stafford has called ‘‘a poetry of encouragement and heart.’’ These, together with her widely anthologized short stories and luminous nonfiction, have earned her four Pushcart Prizes, the I.B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, two Voertman Awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. For the past decade, she has also been winning recognition for a sizable oeuvre of multicultural literature for young readers, all of which is infused with a direct, determined commitment to peace and cross-cultural understanding. As a Palestinian American who spent part of her childhood in Jerusalem and as a long-time resident of San Antonio, Nye focuses on both Arab American and Latino issues in her books for young readers. Her edited collections, which emphasize visual as well as literary art, includeThis Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World(1992), which the American Library Association named a Notable Book,The Tree Is Older Than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems & Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists(1995), andThe Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East(1998). Her original works for children include two picture books for young readers:Sitti’s Secrets(1994), which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the lyricalBenito’s Dream Bottle(1995). Her 1997 novel for young adults,Habibi, was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALA Notable Book, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a Texas Institute of Letters Best Book for Young Readers. Called by one critic ‘‘the work of a poet, not a polemicist,’’ it received
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both the Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children’s Literature and the Jane Addams Book Award. Joy Castro: The direct, courageous expression of simple truths about family, friendship, and compassion seems to work well for your characters. In Habibi, for example, Liyana yells down the Israeli guards in order to visit her imprisoned father, a Palestinian American doctor: ‘‘Her throat felt shaky. But she didn’t turn. . . . ‘‘Of course it’s possible!’’ she said loudly. ‘‘He is my father! I need to see him! NOW! PLEASE! It’s necessary! I must go in this minute!’’ (228). Liyana succeeds; the guards let her in. In your bio note at the end of the paperback edition of Sitti’s Secrets, which is about young Mona’s visit to her Sitti, her grandmother, in a Palestinian village, you write, ‘‘If grandmas ran the world, I don’t think we’d have any wars.’’ Can you talk further about your vision of the way in which personal connections function in the struggle for political peace? Naomi Shihab Nye: Well, most of us aren’t politicians, so personal connections are all we have. I guess I’ve always wished that people could speak up with their honest, true, insightful feelings and needs when they have them—but of course, it’s not always so easy in real life: inhibitions confound us, expectations hinder us. We have all lost many opportunities to speak out about crucial issues we believe in. I have probably been guiltier than most since I have so many generous occasions on which I am invited to express my opinions. This is a luxury writers can never take for granted. In books, I hope that my characters are brave and strong. I want them to use their voices. I want young people to be reminded, always, that voices are the best tools we have. In
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whatever seemingly personal venues we may find ourselves, voices matter. A voice may stir up little waves that reverberate out and out much farther than we could ever imagine. I hope this is true. It has seemed to be so in my experience. Castro: I remember during your rending here at Wabash last fall, you described your ‘‘Nye dinner,’’ in which you invited all the Nyes in the San Antonio phonebook, sight unseen, to your house for a meal. For days after you left, people from the audience were buzzing about the risky generosity of that action: welcoming complete strangers into your home. It’s the kind of action that occurs at the end of Habibi, when Liyana’s Palestinian family hosts Omer, her Jewish friend, in their home—not without some accompanying tensions. What kinds of risks are involved in crosscultural understanding, and how, in your fiction for children and young adults, do you encourage readers to prepare for and face those risks? Nye: Thanks for remembering that offbeat Nye-family story of ours! Well, people who consider the world an interesting place filled with delicious variations always hope to get to know many other people who are unlike themselves in certain ways: different colors or cultures or food-preferences or song-styles or religions. You know, I’ve never understood the impulse to be with people only like ourselves. How dull that would be. Sometimes it’s comforting to be with one’s own crowd for a little while, sure. Next weekend, for example, I’ll be attending the largest annual gathering of Arab Americans in the United States in Washington, DC and it’s always fun, like finding out you have this enormous family. But then you go back to your own neighborhood filled with so many different backgrounds and feel even more interested in all the possibilities and styles. Sometimes appetites need to be whetted. I would hope that writing for young people might serve as an invitation to get to know some of those other slightly different folks out there in the world—without fear, without ever thinking of ‘‘otherness’’ as a threat. It’s a glory, not a threat. We’d have fewer school shootings if kids could remember this. Those people unlike us: how to have empathy with them, for them? Those lives seemingly unlike our own: how are we connected, ultimately? We all sleep, eat, have dreams and loves and hopes and sorrows. I want writing to be connected to all of this. Castro: Habibi and Sitti’s Secrets seem like two different versions of a similar story: one for older, one for younger children. Can you talk
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about the autobiographical elements of that story, and how you decided to move aspects of your own childhood experience into the realm of fiction? What were some of the challenges of doing so? I noticed that the chronology, for example, was updated. Nye: Well, we’re stuck with ourselves, aren’t we? You’re right, of course, in noting this. Someone I don’t know sent me an e-mail from California: ‘‘Do you realize you have recycled some of the same material in various books of yours?’’ She had a rather snippy, academic tone. I wrote her back, ‘‘Yes, indeed, I am filled with shame,’’ and never heard from her again. The truth is, we should not be filled with shame! We’re like our own old grandpas telling the same stories. But I wasn’t through with this material, I guess. I updated it because I wanted to write it as closely-to-the-minute as I could—never an easy thing when dealing with the Middle East and its fluctuations. One must hope to find some deeper, timeless place when one writes, even though our stories are set in time. We all write out of what we know toward what we want to find out. Anyway, I never met Omer, in Habibi. He’s a totally made-up guy. My next book, I’m happy to report, contains many characters and events I have never met in my life. I wish they’d show up, though. Castro: In writing about the Palestinian American experience, do you feel you were charting territory that really hadn’t been explored in US publishing for children and young adults? Nye: I would not be so brazen as to say ‘‘charting new territory,’’ but I think there is much room for more Arab American perspectives in work for young people. Librarians have told me that, for one. And I am very happy each time I see a new book appear that conveys this perspective. For people interested in finding more books with a Middle Eastern connection, write an organization called AWAIR (
[email protected]) and ask them to send their fine catalogue of listings. Castro: Did you have the conscious sense while you were working on Habibi that you were writing against American stereotypes about Arabs and Arab Americans? Nye: I would say it was both conscious and unconscious. When one lives in the United States, one cannot help but be aware of the general media stereotyping against Arabs that goes on—things have gotten much better in this regard in recent years, surely, more balanced—but it is certainly
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still a live wire in many places. Here on the very table next to me I have Professor Jack Shaheen’s book called Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture—he has helped document patterns of recent ugly images in TV and film, as well as in political reporting and op-ed pieces, as has my friend Ali Abunimah of Chicago, who has taken on NPR and other media entities in full force in recent years. When, for example, do Americans hear the word ‘‘terrorist’’ applied to others as often as it’s applied to Arabs? I remember when that crazed Zionist gunned down the men and boys in the Hebron mosque as they were praying—our newspaper here in San Antonio never once referred to him as a terrorist; they actually called him a ‘‘good doctor.’’ Sheesh! I have been writing letters to the editor about this stuff all my life. So have all the other Arab Americans I know. So I would have to say that the sense of wanting a positive image of Palestinians or Palestinian Americans to come forth through the simple story and appealing characters in Habibi was definitely part of my writing consciousness—but I didn’t want it to be rhetorical, or a soapbox, or a didactic position, simply an intrinsic one. There’s a great quote from Marcel Khalife, the beloved Lebanese singer, about Israeli occupation of his own country: ‘‘We fought an occupier that stole the details of our lives. We were forced to protect our sleep, our air, and the pound of flour with blood and steel.’’ I salute the work of the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine—there’s also a branch in Jerusalem now—which brings together Arab and Israeli young people every summer, hoping to build a sense of enlarged humanity in the region’s future. I think we’ll have to count on young people. The older ones haven’t done so well. That’s another notion that wove through Habibi for me. Castro: Many writers who explore ethnicity in their work—I’m thinking here of Bharati Mukherjee and Lan Samantha Chang, for example—have been pressured to commodify their ethnicity for publication (exoticized jacket photos, explicitly ‘‘ethnic’’ cover images, etc.). Have you experienced such pressure? Is there a difference between children’s publishing and publishing for adults in that regard? Nye: No such pressures have ever been exerted on me. You’re right, this may be a difference between books for young people and books for adults—thank goodness. Writers for young people may enjoy more freedom from marketing
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niches, etc. I must always thank my terrific editor Virginia Duncan, who used to work at Simon & Schuster and is now at Greenwillow, Harper/Collins, for her guidance in all matters—she is the best editor there could ever be. Her instincts are a keen compass on a true, true road. She is not swayed by hype, jive, or anybody else’s pressures. Castro: Most of your multicultural books for younger readers, both the edited collections and the original works, are very visual in their appeal—Habibi, I think, is the only exception. Was that a deliberate choice on your part from the inceptions of the projects, or did the focus on art evolve gradually? Nye: Well, we all love art and we always wanted the books to look appealing. I live with a terrific visual artist, photographer Michael Nye, whose portraits appear in What Have you Lost? [a 1999 poetry anthology Nye edited]. Virginia cares a great deal about matching the visual and textual elements—she has let me have a sayso in the selection of all artists and art for our books. I can’t imagine working with an editor who operates otherwise, though apparently many writers do. This is far more important to me than royalties because it creates the whole ambiance and personality of a book. I couldn’t live with a book that had art I didn’t care for. Castro: Nancy Carpenter did a beautiful job with the illustrations in Sitti’s Secrets. Several incorporate surreal imagery—deserts superimposed onto hanging bedsheets, an ocean in the sky above the young protagonist—while others do not. Readers have to search carefully, look for unexpected magic. Can you talk about the way in which that process relates to the story you’re telling in Sitti’s Secrets, and to the larger story about intercultural relations that all your books for young readers seem to offer? Nye: Yes, I love Nancy’s work! She experimented with her paintings for Sitti’s Secrets, painting directly onto maps, using collage-effects in those desert scenes. We are doing another book together, called Baby Radar, and I’m thrilled she said yes to it. And yes, I think readers (and human beings, in all the moments of their daily days) should always be on the lookout for layerings, tuckedaway bits of magic, that help our scenes to glisten—they’re there, it’s just that sometimes we don’t see them. This is what poetry urges us to do: pay that kind of attention. Unfortunately, international relations often hinge on Bigger Talk,
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Political Language, Generic Public-Speak, that is less intimate or endearing than a bucket, a swing, a jug of water, a sprig of mint. We have to reclaim those things ourselves, for sustenance. Kids are closer to this than adults. That’s one reason I like to write for them. Castro: Do you have in mind a particular child—or a type of child—as an ideal reader when you write for children? Nye: Hmmmm. An open-minded one? I like to think most kids are open-minded. Castro: Benito’s Dream Bottle, a picture book, is dedicated to your son Madison. Children have such fresh and startlingly profound ways of looking at things, as you recorded in the poem from Fuel (1998), ‘‘One Boy Told Me,’’ which is made up entirely of quotations from Madison and which got such a warm reception when you read it here last fall. The whole concept of a dream bottle that young Benito comes up with—‘‘It’s inside every body, between the stomach and the chest. At night, when we lie down, it pours the dreams into our heads’’ (10)—reminded me of my own son’s patiently repeated explanation of his many-chambered stomach (we’d been reading about cows) that, oddly enough, allowed him to be full of his dinner after only half a plate while still leaving plenty of room for dessert. His ‘‘dessert chamber’’ became a much-used expression among our extended family. Do any of the images in Dream Bottle come directly from Madison? Nye: The image of the swivel cap that opened and closed by itself, and the way the dreams would pour out when a person lies down and go back in when the person stood up: all that came from him. Castro: Were there any challenges in transposing elements of the story onto a Latino family’s experience? Did you have any concerns about effecting that cultural translation successfully? Nye: Truth is, I never thought of it as a Latino family—just a Latino neighborhood. I realize ‘‘Benito’’ is a Latino name, but here in San Antonio, I know more than one Anglo Juan, for example. Name cross-overs, experience cross-overs: you show me one culture that doesn’t dream and then I’ll start worrying. A few critics of that book said, ‘‘These characters look like AsianLatinos!’’ which made me laugh since Yu Cha Pak, the artist, is a Korean now living in Houston. I did not have a specific cultural intent with that book. It was very important for me to use the name Mr. Laguna, because he was our beloved
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ninety-five-year-old neighbor and he really wanted to see his name in a book before he died. Castro: The central idea of Benito’s Dream Bottle—the restoration of imaginative freedom, spontaneity, creativity to an older person by the care and concern of an innocent child reminded me very much of narratives by Frances Hodgson Burnett, as does the spunk of characters in other books, like Liyana in Habibi. I remember that Mary in The Secret Garden and Sara in A Little Princess both negotiate the move from colonized India back to an England that is supposed to be home but is actually strange to them. Was Hodgson Burnett a writer you read when you were growing up? Nye: I do not recall reading Hodgson Burnett when I was growing up, though I certainly liked The Secret Garden as an adult. I appreciate your mentioning the spunk factor very much. Nothing matters more. Spunk is number one. Some of my favorite authors as a kid were Margaret Wise Brown, E.B. White, Carl Sandburg. Louisa May Alcott, Langston Hughes, and the list continues evolving through reading to this day! Some of my favorite current authors include Karen Brennan, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, W.S. Merwin, Larry Brown, Reginald Gibbons, Edward Hirsch, Lucille Clifton, Jane Hirshfield— well, I have many, many, and I read widely in the Books for Young People field, too. I just loved Louis Sachar’s Holes, as did millions of other people in the U.S. Castro: You’ve edited three wonderful collections of multicultural literature for young adult readers. Can you explain your goals for those projects? Nye: My goals have always been to make wonderful voices available to more readers, to promote poems of humanity and intelligence that extend and connect us all as human beings, to enlarge readers’ horizons—including my own, as I work on the books—and to help connect people. My friend Wendy Barker, a fine poet, once called me a human switchboard. I think that was the greatest compliment I ever received. Castro: In the introduction to The Tree Is Older Than You Are, you respond to anticipated criticism of your role as a non-Mexican editor of Mexican text. The passage reads: Now I live in one of the most Mexican of U.S. cities, in an inner-city neighborhood where no dinner table feels complete without a dish of salsa for gravity, and the soft air hums its double tongue. For some, this may not qualify me to
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gather writings of a culture not in my blood. I suggest that blood be bigger than what we’re born with, that blood keep growing and growing as we live; otherwise how will we become true citizens of the world? For twenty years, working as a visiting writer in dozens of schools in my city and elsewhere, I have carried poems by writers of many cultures into classrooms, feeling the large family of voices linking human experience. We have no borders when we read. (7)
Can you talk further about the politics of ethnic difference—territoriality, the commodification of ethnicity, cultural appropriation? Nye: All I can really say about this is I think we all need to be both bigger and smaller than we are. We are uplifted by one another’s cultures, infused, enlarged. Cultures by necessity blend and commingle and enrich and flavor one another. If I were to present myself as an expert insider in the Mexican American community, people might take issue with that, but as an anthologist and lifetime reader and traveler in the region who simply appreciates Mexican poetry and visual art, I feel equipped to choreograph a book of the same. We may all appreciate one another’s cultural traditions and help to be vehicles of traditions not originally our own by blood without having to feel guilty for it. But I guessed some people might ask, ‘‘Hey, who’s she to talk about this?’’—you know, can’t there be Anglo experts on the blues? Sure, why not? Some of the best talks I’ve ever heard about Japanese poetry were by Anglo-Americans.
ongoing workshops the way I used to do, however. Usually my visits now are one or two days long. Sometimes I miss the longer stints. There are lots of good people doing that work. Writing projects for teachers in various states—the New Jersey Writing Project, for example, and many others—have encouraged teachers to make creative writing an essential part of the curriculum. They’ve done so much good. I’m always shocked, however, at how many classrooms in the United States this wisdom hasn’t reached yet. Bravo to Teachers & Writers Collaborative and the Writing Project at Columbia University for all the work they’ve done in this field, too—bravo to everybody. But no bravo to teachers who still imagine that occasional writing—for tests and official ‘‘assignments’’—will ever be enough. Castro: What has the reaction to the edited collections been from bookstores and educators? Do you know if the books are being used in schools, or if most of their readers just discover them privately on bookstore shelves? Nye: People have been very kind and welcoming to these books. I’m happy to report that the books are being used in many schools and The Tree Is Older Than You Are has been warmly received by ESL teachers as well as Spanish teachers. Also, it ended up being distributed in Mexico by the Sanborn Company, which made me glad.
We are who we are, but we’re not stuck there. I love it when a non-Arab serves me hummus, believe me!
Castro: Do you have any other multicultural editing projects in mind for the future?
Castro: Has being a Poet in the Schools affected your writing and editing for younger readers?
Nye: Yes I do, but first I have to finish this endless second novelito I’m working on! It is set in San Antonio, titled Florrie Will Do It. Also I am working on new poems, new essays, new picture books, and trying to improve upon my garden. After twenty-one years in the same house, wouldn’t you think I’d have a beautiful yard by now? But I’m still working on it. Like writing does if we do it often enough, my yard seems to have taken on a life and directions of its own—I walked outside one day and there was this enormous bed of blossoming yellow and orange nasturtiums all around the mailbox. I have no memory of ever planting them.
Nye: Being a Poet in the Schools is a fabulous pleasure, responsibility, blessing, experiment, and ongoing discovery for everyone who ever participates in such a program. It takes enormous energy reserves and flexibility. Being a nomadby-nature helps too! It has inspired, uplifted, and challenged all of us who do it. And I keep running into kids, ex-students, who say how much it mattered to them too. My most recent anthology, Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets [2000], is a collection of some favorite student writings from over the years. I planned to work as a visiting classroom poet for two years when I started and have now been visiting schools for twenty-five years. I don’t do many long-term
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Source: Joy Castro, ‘‘Nomad, Switchboard, Poet: Naomi Shihab Nye’s Multicultural Literature for Young Readers: An Interview,’’ in MELUS, Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 225–37.
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SOURCES Barenblat, Rachel, ‘‘Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye,’’ in Pif, http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/240/?page=1& (accessed July 16, 2009). Barr, John, ‘‘American Poetry in the New Century,’’ in Poetry Magazine, September 2006, http://www.poetry foundation.org/journal/article.html?id=178560 (accessed July 17, 2009). Colloff, Pamela, ‘‘Naomi Shihab Nye: Her Poetry Finds Meaning in the ‘Gleam of Particulars,’’’ in Texas Monthly, September 1, 1998. Elmusa, Sharif S., ‘‘Vital Attitude of the Poet: Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye,’’ in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 2007, pp. 107–108. Hirschfield, Robert, ‘‘A Poet Walks the Line (Naomi Shihab Nye),’’ in Progressive, November 1, 2006. Kavanagh, Meg, ‘‘Everywhere Impulse, Devotion, Everywhere: A Conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye,’’ in Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003, http://www. education.wisc.edu/ccbc/authors/experts/nye.asp (accessed July 16, 2009). Lesesne, Teri, ‘‘Honoring the Mystery of Experience,’’ in Teacher Librarian, Vol. 26, No. 2, November 1998, p. 59. Matthews, Tracey, ed., ‘‘Nye, Naomi Shihab,’’ in Concise Major 21st-Century Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors, 3rd ed., Thomson Gale, 2006. Miazga, Mark, ‘‘The Spoken Word Movement of the 1990s,’’ in Michigan State University, https://www.msu.edu/ miazgama/spokenword.htm (accessed July 17, 2009). Monaghan, Pat, Review of ‘‘Red Suitcase,’’ in Booklist, Vol. 91, No. 4, October 15, 1994, p. 395. ‘‘Naomi Shihab Nye,’’ in Poets.org, http://www.poets. org/poet.php/prmPID/174 (accessed July 16, 2009). ‘‘Naomi Shihab Nye,’’ in Steven Barclay Agency, http:// www.barclayagency.com/nye.html (accessed July 20, 2009). Nye, Naomi Shihab, ‘‘Shoulders,’’ in Red Suitcase, BOA Editions, 1994, p. 103. ———, ‘‘‘We Need Poetry Ever’ More Than: Talking with Poet Naomi Shihab Nye about Writing, Identity . . . and Cars,’’ in Writing!, October 1, 2007. Review of ‘‘Red Suitcase,’’ in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 39, September 26, 1994, p. 59. Seaman, Donna, Review of You and Yours, in Booklist, August 1, 2005. Townsend, Alison, Review of Red Suitcase, in Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 13, No. 3, December 1995, pp. 26–28. Woolley, Bryan, ‘‘Poet Builds Bridges, Line by Line,’’ in Dallas Morning News, September 24, 2005, http://www. dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/life/stories/DNNSL_nye_0925liv.ART.State.Edition1.20612533.html (accessed July 20, 2009).
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FURTHER READING Barry, Lynda, What It Is, Drawn and Quarterly, 2008. School Library Journal gave this book a starred review. Barry has filled each page with drawings, photographs, and paintings to accompany this collection of philosophical questions for teens to ponder. She encourages readers to explore their own creativity through writing in a way that appeals to students who prefer art to writing or who do not believe they have what it takes to write. Digh, Patti, Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally, skirt!, 2008. Digh’s stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer and died thirty-seven days later. She continually asked herself what she would do with her life on any given day if she knew she had but thirty-seven more left to live. The resulting humorous book is part meditation, part memoir, and part workbook to help interested readers find more meaning in their daily existence. Hamby, Zachary, Mythology for Teens, Prufrock Press, 2009. Written by a high school communications arts teacher, this book relates ancient stories to modern culture for teens. Readers are encouraged to question and deconstruct issues such as revenge and forgiveness, the meaning of life, and the role of women in society. Nye, Naomi Shihab, Habibi, Simon Pulse, 1999. This young-adult novel tells the story of a fourteen-year-old in an Arab American family that moves from St. Louis, Missouri, back to Jerusalem, Israel. When Liyana falls in love with a Jewish boy, she challenges cultural and traditional norms. The background is one of violent conflict between Palestinians and Jews. The Poetry Center and John Timpane, Poetry for Dummies, For Dummies, 2001. This guide explores five thousand years of verse and seeks to demystify poetry for those who fear it most. The text provides a variety of definitions of poetry according to some of the most celebrated poets of their time. Readers will have the opportunity to master three steps of interpretation and participate in individual writing exercises. Wooldridge, Susan G., Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, Three Rivers Press, 1997. This is a ‘‘how to’’ book for people who do not yet know they are poets. Wooldridge helps readers learn to create images, use metaphor, and find poetry in everyday life.
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Sympathy ‘‘Sympathy’’ was published in Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899), Paul Laurence Dunbar’s fourth book of poems, one of the six major volumes he would complete in his brief thirty-three years of life. Though he also wrote novels, short stories, songs, and plays, he is remembered chiefly as a poet. Before writing ‘‘Sympathy,’’ he was already famous and known as the Negro Poet Laureate, having toured the country performing his dialect poems about the plantation days. By 1899, the year ‘‘Sympathy’’ was published, he was discouraged that the public did not seem interested in his other works written in standard English. He wrote his serious poetry, like ‘‘Sympathy,’’ in literary English, on a variety of subjects in addition to black themes. He had a lyric gift, but critics said his standard English poems were imitative and praised only the poems in dialect, which they believed to be more genuinely expressive of the Negro. The poem ‘‘Sympathy’’ is one of his most famous statements about racism. He did not feel free to write as he wanted and compared the feeling to being a bird in a cage.
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR 1899
The son of slaves, Dunbar felt the continuing legacy of slavery in a time of rampant racism in the United States. Dunbar’s struggle to become the first recognized African American author continued even after his death in 1906. Later readers accused him of catering to whites with his poems depicting slaves on the plantation. In the modern age, he has taken his place as one of the founders of African American literature, and his poems
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Dunbar began to write seriously at the age of sixteen and published some of his poems locally. His first real encounter with racial discrimination came after high school in 1891. He could only find menial work as an elevator boy. However, when the Western Association of Writers met in Dayton in 1892, Dunbar was invited to give the welcome, which he composed and recited in verse. He made such a positive impression on the group that he found supporters to help him publish his first collection of poetry, Oak and Ivy, in 1892. The volume contains black dialect poems inspired by the dialect work of James Whitcomb Riley. In 1893, Dunbar went to Chicago, Illinois, to work at the Haitian Pavilion at the Columbian Exposition. There he met abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass who recognized his talent and employed him.
Paul Laurence Dunbar (The Library of Congress)
have been memorized by generations of African Americans and other Americans alike. Though he felt like a failure, he inspired the writers of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s to use their vernacular speech as literary expression. ‘‘Sympathy’’ can be found in the Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1993), published by the University Press of Virginia.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Dunbar was born June 27, 1872, in Dayton, Ohio, to Joshua Dunbar and Matilda Burton Murphy Dunbar, a widow with two sons by her previous slave marriage. Dunbar’s parents had both been slaves in Kentucky. After the emancipation, thousands of freed slaves moved north, and Matilda took her young sons to Dayton and became a laundry woman, until she met and married Joshua. Joshua was an alcoholic, and Matilda obtained a divorce and custody of Dunbar, her sickly son, of whom she was protective. Dunbar was the only black student at Dayton Central High School, but he was accepted and excelled.
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With the help of patrons, Dunbar published his second volume, Majors and Minors, in 1896. It was favorably reviewed in Harper’s Weekly by William Dean Howells, a leading American writer and critic at the time. Dunbar became an overnight celebrity as the first nationally known black writer in American society. With his charm, manners, talent, and musical voice, his readings electrified audiences. In 1896, Lyrics of a Lowly Life was published by Dodd, Mead in New York. In 1897 Dunbar worked as a clerk in the Library of Congress. He married another black author, Alice Ruth Moore in 1898 at the height of his fame and productivity. He published his first novel, The Uncalled, and first collection of short stories, Folks from Dixie, in that same year. Lyrics of the Hearthside, containing ‘‘Sympathy,’’ was published in 1899. Dunbar became gravely ill in 1899 with tuberculosis. The Dunbars moved to Denver, Colorado for his health, where he published his second novel, The Love of Landry, and a collection of short stories titled The Strength of Gideon in 1900. His third novel, The Fanatics, was published in 1901, and his last novel, The Sport of the Gods, was released in 1902. Also in 1902, Dunbar and Moore separated because of his alcoholism. He spent his last days in Dayton with his mother, still producing until the end: Lyrics of Love and Laughter and In Old Plantation Days (both 1903); The Heart of Happy Hollow (1904); and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905). He died of tuberculosis on February 9, 1906, at the age of thirty-three. Many of his poems, essays, and plays were collected and published posthumously.
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POEM TEXT I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting— I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
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The Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection is a package of three DVDs and three audiotapes with top African American storytellers reading stories and poems by the poet. It was produced by Cerebellum Corporation in 2008.
The Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, narrated by Bobby Norfolk, produced in 2004 by August House, is available as an audio download or audio CD from LearnOutLoud.com.
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and 5, reinforces the flowing sounds of wind and water. LINES 4–7
POEM SUMMARY Stanza 1 LINES 1–3
‘‘Sympathy’’ is a lyric in iambic tetrameter, seven line stanzas of four metric feet per line. The last line of each stanza is shorter, with three feet. The first line establishes the poem’s controlling metaphor of the caged bird looking at a spring day, which mirrors the speaker’s situation. The speaker ends the line with an exclamation that suggests a sigh of regret. Although the main rhythm of the poem is iambic (alternating unstressed and stressed beats), many spondees (two strong beats together) are used for emphasis. The next few lines create a contrast between the cage and a beautiful spring day. The bird would especially feel restrained on a day when the sun is shining outside on the meadows and hills. In line 3, the image of wind blowing through fresh grass creates a feeling of refreshment and freedom, denied to the caged bird. The rhyme scheme of this stanza is ABAABCC. Lines 1, 3, and 4 are connected through end rhyme, which helps create the melodious singing sound of wind and the river in the next line. The alliteration (repetition of initial consonants) in lines 2, 3, 4,
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In line 4, the river, like the wind, is another image of movement. This dynamic quality of the landscape would make anyone inside a small space feel restless. The first bird singing in spring, depicted in line 5, and the first flower opening express hope ordinarily, but to one shut up, it would be torture not to share the joy of expansion, to be a mere onlooker. The perfume from the flower is delicate and subtle, like a bird’s song. The suggestion in line 6 that the perfume actually sneaks out of the flower cup when no one is looking (through alliteration) is another image of the natural expression of living things that cannot be denied or shut off. The thought breaks off with a dash creating suspense before the last line of the stanza. The expansion of the previous line is brought to a sudden halt in line 7 with the return to the image of the caged bird. The rhythm and rhyme of the poem establish the nature of life to sing out.
Stanza 2 LINES 8–10
In line 8, the speaker says he understands why the bird beats its wing inside the cage. The spondees emphasize the useless flapping of the bird’s
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wings. In the next line, the bird continues hopelessly to beat its wings on the cage bars until it bleeds. The repeated alliteration in lines 8 and 9 create a feeling of restraint. The cage metaphor suggests the former slave status of black people, but it also signifies a current restraint. The poet’s wife, Alice Dunbar, says he wrote the poem when he was working all day in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., looking out the barred windows to the green grass and trees. He felt imprisoned, doing menial work, when he wanted to be writing. In line 10, the bird flaps his wings but instead of getting anywhere, it must return to its perch. The spondee in the middle of the line recreates this image of the flapping wings pushing the bird back to its perch. LINES 11–14
In line 11, the speaker expresses what the bird wants to do. Instead of clinging to a perch, it wants to be on the swinging branch of a tree. Both a perch and a bough are made of wood, but one is alive with movement, and one is dead and artificial as part of a man-made birdcage. It is apparent in line 12 that the bird has obviously repeated this action many times because it has scars from previous attempts to free itself from its cage. The fact that the scars are very old, however, could also suggest the legacy of slavery. The current pain of facing racism and restriction evokes the old historical wound that is still bleeding. Each time the bird tries to get free and is thwarted, the pain in its wings hurts more. Line 13 ends with a dash, like hitting a brick wall. The pressure of the emotion has built up in this stanza without any resolution. To underscore this lack of movement forward, the concluding couplet is not CC but again, AA (the stanza’s rhyme scheme is ABAABAA). Lines 8, 10, 11, 13, and 14 all rhyme. There are only two rhymes in this stanza, A and B, as though the bird is only allowed to sing one or two notes. Line 14 is a concluding shorter line and echoes line 8, which is a variation of the refrain of the poem.
Stanza 3 LINES 15–17
In line 15, the speaker says he understands why the bird in the cage sings, and again utters a sigh of sadness. The bird’s wing is injured and its heart is sore, in line 16, and yet the bird sings. Its
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heart is not in the song, and yet it still sings. This is what people want from a caged bird: a song. There is ‘‘B’’ alliteration in lines 16 and 17 as the speaker describes the bird once again beating his wings to get free. The ‘‘B’’ is a sound that stops as it is articulated. It suggests that the power of the bird’s song is stifled. This line could also paradoxically explain the fact that the only freedom the bird or speaker feels is in singing, even if constrained. LINES 18–21
Lines 15, 17, and 18 rhyme, but the lyrical effect is muted in this stanza, with darker images and harsher sounds. In line 18, the speaker says that the song the bird sings is not joyful. The song the bird sings is a spontaneous prayer from its heart. The feeling that the bird has reached its limit is recreated in the three strong beats together at the end of line 19. In line 20, the bird’s song is also described as a plea, a begging to a higher power for relief. This tentative prayer ends with a dash at the end of the line, showing that it is inconclusive. The rhyme scheme of this stanza is the same as the first stanza (ABAABCC). It explains that the speaker understands why the bird is singing despite its imprisonment.
THEMES Racism The central metaphor of the caged bird in ‘‘Sympathy,’’ with the bird forced to perform within confinement, could be taken as suggesting the slavery African Americans endured in the United States for two and a half centuries. Though Dunbar lived after the emancipation, the legacy of slavery continued through various social, legal, and psychological constraints. He was refused white collar or journalistic work because of his race, forced to work in the confinement of an elevator and the barred library stacks that were the inspiration for the poem. Dunbar was a brilliant and creative man, but he struggled to overcome the racial stereotype of blacks as slow, lazy, and child-like. The blacks he portrayed in his dialect poems, singing and dancing on the plantation, were part of the folklore of the past to him, like the Midwestern folklore used in James Whitcomb Riley’s poems. He heard stories of the Old
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
James Whitcomb Riley (1853–1916) was an influence on Dunbar’s decision to write local color poems using dialect. Choose one student in class to recite Dunbar’s dialect poem, ‘‘When De Co’n Pone’s Hot,’’ celebrating a Southern black meal. Another student can perform James Whitcomb Riley’s Hoosier dialect poem, ‘‘When the Frost Is on the Punkin.’’ Discuss the scenes and characterization of each poem in class. How do the poets preserve regional folk life in their poems? Alice Dunbar (later known as DunbarNelson), the poet’s wife, was also a wellknown black author. Read Alice Dunbar’s poems ‘‘Rainy Day’’ and ‘‘Cano—I Sing’’ and contrast the messages of those poems to Dunbar’s ‘‘Sympathy.’’ Write a paper comparing and contrasting their poems in content and style. Research the influence of Dunbar on poets of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, and report to the class in a PowerPoint audio and visual presentation, using poem selections of both authors to illustrate your points.
South from his mother and had a talent for reproducing accent, phrasing, and characterization. Dunbar was also highly educated. He saw himself as middle class, urbane, worldly, and able to meet other artists from around the world. Though Dunbar never denied his race, and in fact, made many statements on racial injustice, he did not feel he should be tied down to black dialect poems. He was interested in art and experimented with many genres and ethnic voices. He used both white and black characters in his fiction. Dunbar wrote serious literary pieces in the tradition of Lord Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dunbar became famous as an African American poet but few understood the
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Dunbar’s poems ‘‘Sympathy’’ and ‘‘We Wear the Mask’’ are often taken as statements of the difficulties African Americans have faced. Use these poems as points of departure to critique the statement of another work of African American poetry or fiction of your choice in an essay.
African American poetry is influenced by such oral forms as spirituals, sermons, jazz, work songs, gospel, and blues. Apply this idea to the dialect poems of Dunbar. First have the class read one of Dunbar’s poems such as ‘‘An Ante-bellum Sermon’’ or ‘‘A Negro Love Song’’ on paper and then have it performed aloud by a practiced reader. In an in-class essay explain what you heard from the music and rhythm of the poems that you did not see while reading it on paper.
Compare and contrast the theme of freedom in ‘‘Sympathy’’ with the freedom represented in the Pearl Buck novel The Good Earth, (1931) suitable for younger readers. Present your conclusions in an essay.
range of his accomplishments or regarded his many talents as important. His dialect poems imitating the speech of southern plantation blacks were what made him popular, and people wanted to see him perform what they thought was authentic black speech. Like a bird in a cage, he felt he had to produce what audiences expected of a black man. Dunbar never felt he had accomplished what he wanted. Critics have since interpreted his frustration in many ways; for instance, that he was unable to find an authentic black voice within white culture. The poem ‘‘Sympathy’’ is often taken as a statement of this dilemma, where the poet feels hemmed in and unable to be himself. The old scars that the bird carries from beating
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his wings on the bars could symbolize the scars of the black race that Dunbar also must carry, for though Dunbar lived a comparatively privileged life, moving freely in both black and white society, he was not free of being typecast. Similarly, much was expected of him as a symbol of his race. He was rarely allowed to be an individual publically. Other Dunbar poems that comment on racism include ‘‘The Haunted Oak,’’‘‘We Wear the Mask,’’‘‘The Poet,’’‘‘Right’s Security,’’‘‘The Warrior’s Prayer,’’‘‘To the South on Its New Slavery,’’‘‘Frederick Douglass,’’ and ‘‘Ode to Ethiopia.’’
Freedom A bird is a frequent poetic symbol for freedom since it can fly. It is also a common symbol in poetry for the poet. The yearning of the bird for its freedom in ‘‘Sympathy’’ is graphically portrayed when the bird sees the landscape outside. It hears other birds sing and the wind and river rushing and responds by beating its wings against the cage, trying to get out. The urge for freedom is so compelling that the bird endures pain again and again trying to fly, only to be beaten back. By presenting the contrast between the cage and the spring day, it is obvious that a cage is a cruel perversion of life. Whether meaning a literal cage, as slavery, or a psychological one, as Dunbar and many black artists have felt, Dunbar protests that it is wrong to thwart the potential of any living being. It is natural for every creature to express its life and want its freedom. In this poem, the bird, and by implication the speaker, is denied what is natural. The speaker has sympathy for the bird, so the poem is from the point of view of the one without freedom. An onlooker might think that the bird should be quiet, or that the speaker should be content. From the interior point of view, racial prejudice causes extreme suffering and damage. The poet emphasizes a sense of sympathy for the prisoner. Other Dunbar poems on the theme of freedom include ‘‘Emancipation,’’‘‘Ode to Ethiopia,’’‘‘Justice,’’‘‘Differences,’’ and ‘‘Lincoln.’’
The Nature of Poetry Bird song is a metaphor for poetry. There are several implications about poetry in the poem. First, a poet is a person with sympathy. Sympathy means to feel with another being, to put oneself in the place of others. Dunbar’s writings, both poetry and prose, do exhibit such
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sympathy with a variety of characters from all cultures. For instance, his short story ‘‘The Lynching of Jube Benson’’ shows insight into both black and white psychology. He depicts African Americans in his dialect poems with humor and insight (‘‘The Party’’ and ‘‘When Malindy Sings’’). Dunbar was influenced by Romantic literature for his serious poems and by regional local color writing for his dialect poems. His underlying aesthetic in the standard English verse is romantic in his choice of subject matter (love, great lives, art, freedom, injustice) and form (odes, ballads, sonnets, and lyrics). Romantic poets celebrated nature as Dunbar does in the first stanza of ‘‘Sympathy.’’ The poet, being sensitive, feels with all creatures, and sees and records beauty as well as injustice. While in his fiction Dunbar experimented with realism, for instance in his novel Sport of the Gods; in his poetry he holds romantic tenets, showing his talent as a great lyricist. Freedom is essential for creativity to flow. A bird may sing in a cage, but it is not the same as the bird singing unfettered in nature. In fact, one cannot put restraint on song, for it is a spontaneous welling up of the impulse of life. This is brought out in the first stanza with the image of the perfume sneaking out of the flower cup. It is so delicate an expression that one might hardly notice how the perfume is emitted, but certainly, one could not stop a flower from putting forth its scent. It is part of the identity of the flower. Similarly, it is in the nature of a bird to sing or a poet to write. One does not tell the river how to flow or the bird how to sing. When society shuts down creativity or the voice of anyone trying to speak his or her truth, it is against nature, the nature of the individual, and of nature in general. The song of a bird or poet comes from a deep place. Whether in joy or pain, the poet/ bird sings from the heart about the origin of its song. If restrained, the singer will not produce a happy song, but it is important to note that the desire to sing is so strong that even pain will not stop the singer from singing. In fact, it can make the song more poignant. This idea of the sorrow of African American song is inherent in the blues, and Dunbar believed that rich lyric sorrow was the essence of African music.
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A caged bird (Image copyright Vinicius Tupinamba, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
STYLE Personal Lyric Lyric poetry is an ancient genre, popular from classical times through the present, in almost every culture. Lyric means song and was originally a song sung to an accompanying lyre or stringed instrument. A lyric poem is short and musical rather than narrative or dramatic, expressing emotions or thoughts. A personal lyric represents the subjective experience of one speaker. The speaker may or may not have the same feelings as the poet, but it is the representation of a speaking person’s thoughts on a particular subject, for instance, love. Dunbar was influenced by the lyric poetry of Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Famous lyric poems include Tennyson’s ‘‘Now the Crimson Petal Sleeps’’ and Poe’s ‘‘To Helen.’’ The fact that lyrics predominate in Dunbar’s poetry is illustrated by the fact that several of his volumes have the term lyric in the title: Lyrics of Lowly Life, Lyrics of the Hearthside, Lyrics of Love and Laughter, and Lyrics of Sunshine and
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Shadow. The lyric or song was flexible enough to accommodate both Dunbar’s poems in literary English and his dialect poems. He put the two types side by side in the later volumes, so that one might see ‘‘In the Morning,’’ written in humorous dialect, alongside the serious ‘‘The Poet,’’ expressing in standard English his concern that he had failed as a writer.
Protest Poem Dunbar was no doubt inspired by two of his favorite American poets, John Greenleaf Whittier and Longfellow, who wrote protest poems against slavery before the Civil War as part of the abolitionist movement. It was not necessary for Dunbar to depend on white models, however, for the history of African American oral traditions shows an emphasis on protest. The enslaved Africans kept up their spirits with encoded messages in their songs and spirituals. Such familiar religious spirituals as ‘‘Get on Board, Little Children’’ and ‘‘Go Down, Moses,’’ were a way to talk about freedom and slavery in Biblical terms or to warn about an impending escape attempt. The song ‘‘Oh, Freedom’’ is another that was sung at secret meetings
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on the plantations. It became an anthem of the civil rights movement. The fact that these protests were coded indicates something important about early African American literature. It was dangerous to express protest too openly. In the post-Reconstruction era, Dunbar was still writing in a time of racial tension. Like fiction writer Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858– 1932), Dunbar learned to write for a double audience, with protest generally muted or told through indirection. Some notable exceptions to this are Dunbar’s famous racial assertions in ‘‘The Haunted Oak,’’‘‘We Wear the Mask,’’ and ‘‘Sympathy.’’‘‘Sympathy’’ protests the racist conditions under which Dunbar had to write and live, though his argument is cleverly worded through metaphor. He symbolically refers to the pain of slavery that generations of Africans must still carry as the scars on the caged bird’s wings. Those scars would be enumerated more bluntly in the protest poems of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s in such examples as ‘‘Incident’’ and ‘‘Saturday’s Child’’ by Countee Cullen. Langston Hughes’s ‘‘I, Too, Sing America’’ asserts more boldly than Dunbar dared, that the black voice is part of the American voice. The protest poems of the 1960s centered around the civil rights movement; for instance, ‘‘The Ballad of Birmingham’’ by Dudley Randall recounted the bombing of children in a church. Compared to the later more aggressive protest poems written by black poets, Dunbar has been accused by modern critics of being an Uncle Tom, accommodating white tastes with black stereotypes in his dialect poems. This is an incorrect assumption, for Dunbar did protest injustice in both his poetry and prose.
African American Poetry Slave poets Lucy Terry, Jupiter Hammon, and Phillis Wheatley published works even before the American Revolution. Phillis Wheatley (1754– 1784), the child prodigy slave of the Wheatley family who produced polished eighteenth-century verses, was the first well-known African American author, traveling abroad to promote her work and the work of abolitionists. African American poetry refers to the writings of those people who were brought forcibly to the United States from Africa and kept in bondage for two and a half centuries. It was forbidden for slaves to learn to read or write, and yet they did both. At first they continued their native oral
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tradition with songs, spirituals, and sermons. After learning to write, many ex-slaves like Frederick Douglass wrote slave narratives. During the post-Reconstruction era, from about 1870 to World War I, published black authors primarily produced journalistic prose or fiction, or single poems. Dunbar’s ambition to be an accepted mainstream poet led him to write in standard European and American poetic forms. When inspired by James Whitcomb Riley’s example to write poetry in regional dialect, he wrote poems in black southern dialect and became famous for it. Dunbar preferred to write literary English poems, which he felt most expressed who he was. Yet his white audience felt his dialect poems expressed the authentic black experience and his publisher favored these works as well. Dunbar’s dilemma was a crucial moment in the development of African American poetry. He wrote for two audiences with two different languages. ‘‘Sympathy’’ partly describes this dilemma of the black writer who writes against such a heavy burden of expectations. Dunbar’s experiments inspired later poets such as Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer during the Harlem Renaissance to integrate these separate modes of expression into an English language that could distinctively express the African American voice. It was the revolution of the 1960s that garnered African American literature, like other minority literatures, praise and respect. With black writers being taken seriously and winning Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, their work could no longer be denied its place as part of mainstream American literature, and black authors felt free to use whatever language their imaginations could invent.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Failure of Reconstruction Reconstruction is the period after the Civil War (1865–1877) in which the United States tried to restructure American society by abolishing slavery and amending the Constitution (precisely the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments) to give civil rights to four million former slaves. While federal troops were stationed in the South, state governments were organized to give blacks the right to vote and schools and positions in government. By
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1900: Only a handful of African Americans, such as Alice Moore Dunbar, go to college. Today: Although underrepresented in terms of total college population, millions of African Americans enroll in higher education and earn college degrees. 1900: There are few published African American writers, especially outside of black journals and magazines. Today: African American writers win the highest literary prizes (Pulitzer, Nobel), write best-selling novels that are made into films, and are studied as part of the American literary canon.
1900: Jim Crow laws, which legally separate the races in public settings in southern
1877, however, white supremacists in the South had reasserted their power and states’ rights to enact Jim Crow laws that led to segregation of the races and deprived blacks of their civil liberties. Peonage, the practice of creditors forcing debtors to work for them, was common in the South and was criticized in Dunbar’s poem ‘‘To the South on Its New Slavery.’’ Full citizenship for African Americans did not come about until almost a century later during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Black historians have called the period from 1877 to the end of World War I the ‘‘nadir’’ of race relations in America.
Black Migration to Northern Cities After the Civil War, the United States changed rapidly from an agrarian economy to industrial capitalism. With the emancipation, blacks began migrating from the South to escape poverty and racial violence to the North where there were jobs and more opportunities. The largest migrations happened after Dunbar’s death, but even during his life he witnessed and even worried about African Americans moving from a country life in the South to ghettos in the northern
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states, regulate the lives of African Americans. These laws disenfranchise African Americans, who are not considered part of the democratic process. Today: African Americans have full political rights, and the first African American U.S. President, Barack Obama, is inaugurated in 2009.
1900: Tuberculosis (TB), the cause of Dunbar’s death, is almost always fatal, with no treatment available except bed rest in a mild climate. Today: TB can be cured with anti-TB drugs, although it has made a comeback recently, because it has become resistant to some traditional medications.
cities. In The Sport of the Gods, he pictures a black family ruined by moving to New York. Dunbar was one of the first to see that racism could be as virulent in the North as in the South.
Racial Discrimination and Racial Violence The terrorism the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups inflicted on blacks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was largely countenanced by both southern and northern whites. D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, clearly casts the Ku Klux Klan as heroes restoring order to the South and shows blacks as evil. W. E. B. Du Bois, the black activist whom Dunbar admired, objected to this piece of hate propaganda accepted as mainstream. In the 1890s, when Dunbar was beginning his career, there were hundreds of lynchings in the country. Dunbar was so appalled by this unpunished practice of mob violence that he wrote a poem, ‘‘The Haunted Oak,’’ and the short story, ‘‘The Lynching of Jube Benson,’’ in protest. Although Dunbar was luckier than many of his race, Dunbar did deal with racial discrimination, even in Ohio. He was
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unable to realize his dream of going to Harvard Law School and had to be satisfied with a high school education. He was forced into taking menial jobs and told flatly that newspapers and other businesses did not hire minorities.
Racial Stereotypes: Minstrelsy and Uncle Remus Minstrel shows were a form of popular musical and comedy entertainment after the Civil War, lampooning blacks as stupid and superstitious. At first the parts were played by whites in blackface, but later, by blacks themselves in ‘‘Amos and Andy’’ routines, with stock characters like Jim Crow, Jim Dandy, and Mr. Bones. They sang and danced and spoke in southern black dialect. Even the most liberal newspapers and magazines of the day spread racist caricatures of African Americans in articles and cartoons. Popular myths about the ‘‘good old South’’ were spread in the Uncle Remus stories (1881) by a white journalist, Joel Chandler Harris, who used black folklore and dialect. As Dunbar also used life on the plantation and black dialect for his dialect poems, he was later criticized for portraying slavery in a comic and acceptable light. That this was not his intent or the result of his works has successfully been argued by many recent critics. The Uncle Remus stories were stereotypes; Dunbar’s folk poems transcend such images.
Rise of the Black Middle Class In spite of tremendous opposition, African Americans found ways to become educated and succeed, becoming lawyers, doctors, business entrepreneurs, actors, and artists. Dunbar is praised as the first black professional author in America, able to earn a living by writing and speaking. The strategy for raising blacks to the middle class was hotly debated among black activists. Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was a slave, but he became an educator and leader of the African American community after the Civil War. He pleaded with middle-class whites to let the black race develop along separate lines to develop the industrial skills they needed to support themselves economically. He was accused later by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a black scholar and political advocate, as an accommodationist (compromiser). Though Washington won white support for blacks, he did not push for black college education and equal rights as Du Bois did.
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Du Bois’s famous statement that a black man lives in double consciousness, having to switch between white and black expectations, is often applied to Dunbar’s situation of trying to please both white and black audiences. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He began the push for civil rights which was later taken up by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In spite of Dunbar’s early poverty, he grew up in a town that was more integrated than most. Dayton, Ohio, was an end point of the Underground Railroad and in Dunbar’s youth, ten percent of the population was black. Dunbar graduated from a white high school, and he was even the editor of the school newspaper. He was proud to live a middle class life with his wife, Alice, in Washington, D.C., with other black professionals, a life he describes in his essay, ‘‘Negro Society in Washington’’ in the Saturday Evening Post (December 14, 1901). The black middle class at this point was still segregated, however.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW When Dunbar published his second collection of poems, Majors and Minors (1896), a famous actor, James Herne, sent his copy to novelist and critic William Dean Howells, who reviewed it in Harper’s Weekly on June 27, 1896, reprinted in Peter Revell’s Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was Dunbar’s twenty-fourth birthday, and overnight he found himself famous as the first genuine Negro poet of America. Howells compares him to Robert Burns in his use of dialect, saying that Dunbar ‘‘has been able to bring us nearer to the heart of primitive human nature in his race than anyone else has yet done.’’ Though Howells made Dunbar famous, the praise did a certain amount of damage, for Howells pronounces Dunbar’s standard English poems to be inferior to his dialect pieces. Dunbar was never able to influence the public to take his standard English poems (such as ‘‘Sympathy’’), or his prose, seriously. He established his fame as a performer of his dialect pieces. When ‘‘Sympathy’’ was published in Lyrics of the Hearthside in 1899, critics echoed Howells’s earlier statements. In a review for the Baltimore Herald (March, 1899) reprinted in E. W. Metcalf,
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Jr.’s Paul Laurence Dunbar: A Bibliography, a contributor comments: ‘‘Mr. Dunbar’s choice of words is happier when he is writing in the musical speech of the Negro.’’ Also reprinted in Metcalf’s work, a contributor to the New York Mail and Express (April 8, 1899) praises the standard English poems as ‘‘amateur excellence,’’ but the dialect poems as proving ‘‘his eminence among the dialect writers of America.’’ Many critics of the time saw his standard English poems as imitative. After Dunbar’s death, his widow, Alice Dunbar, also an author and critic, attempted to correct the idea that the dialect poems express the poet. Quoted by Revell in Twayne’s ‘‘United States Author’’ series, Alice states: ‘‘it was in the pure English poems that the poet expressed himself. He may have expressed his race in the dialect poems; they were to him the side issues of his work.’’ The controversy picked up in the 1920s with the new emphasis on black pride in the Harlem Renaissance making it appear that Dunbar catered to whites. According to Revell, Dunbar’s friend and fellow writer James Weldon Johnson, in his anthology, The Book of American Negro Poetry, defends Dunbar as the first to use dialect ‘‘as a medium for the true interpretation of Negro character and psychology.’’ In the first known balanced and serious criticism of Dunbar, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet of His People (1936), Benjamin Brawley claims that Dunbar was a genius who was constrained by the racism of his time from speaking as he wanted to, but also that he created a landmark for other black authors with his work. Nevertheless, the 1940s and 1950s were low points in the appreciation of Dunbar. In Dunbar Critically Examined (1941), Victor Lawson declares: ‘‘In his poems in dialect Dunbar stood as the conscious or unconscious apologist of the plantation.’’ This image of Dunbar was gradually erased with the revival of interest at the Centenary Conference on Dunbar in Dayton in 1972. In a contribution to A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1975), Darwin Turner provides an opinion similar to Howells’s original evaluation: ‘‘[Dunbar’s] unique contribution to American literature is his dialect poetry.’’ In hindsight, the criticism comes full circle, but with the addition of understanding both the racism Dunbar fought and his contribution of the black vernacular as legitimate poetic speech. In addition, new previously unpublished Dunbar manuscripts reveal his breadth and experimentation in various
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genres. Despite critical debates, Dunbar’s poems entered the oral traditions of African Americans from the beginning, and they are often memorized by school children. In the 1980s, black poet Herbert Woodward Martin traveled with a one-man show, reciting Dunbar’s dialect and standard poems to receptive audiences, illustrating their power when performed. Dunbar is now considered a mainstream American poet who was black, instead of a segregated Negro poet. This is what he had hoped for, but it took him a century to achieve this goal.
CRITICISM Susan Andersen Andersen is a writer and college English teacher. In this essay, she considers Dunbar’s poem ‘‘Sympathy’’ as a symbol of the African American poetic tradition. Dunbar was often called the Negro Poet Laureate at the beginning of the twentieth century, but by the 1950s he was seen as an embarrassment to many readers because his dialect poems called up plantation stereotypes of African Americans. In his day, white readers embraced his dialect poems (‘‘The Party,’’‘‘When Malindy Sings’’) as the authentic voice of a Negro poet, while his standard English poems, such as ‘‘Sympathy,’’ were seen as imitative. Forced to continue writing and performing the dialect pieces due to public opinion, he feared that he had failed as a writer, as is evident in his poem, ‘‘The Poet.’’ Beginning in the 1970s, there has been an ongoing reassessment of his contribution to the American literary canon. Critics have pointed out his difficult but crucial position between black and white cultures. How could he speak in a true voice using either standard English or a black dialect? Dunbar had to forge a tradition of African American poetry that did not exist; the caged bird metaphor in ‘‘Sympathy’’ can be seen as a symbol for that tradition, and it yields both positive and negative implications. Dunbar had dual aspirations from his youth to be a voice for his people and to be accepted as an American author without racial consideration. He thought of being a journalist at first. He had been the editor of his high school newspaper, thoroughly accepted for his literary talents in an all-white high school in Dayton, Ohio. Perhaps Dunbar thought of that experience as
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DUNBAR HAD TO FORGE A TRADITION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY THAT DID NOT EXIST; THE CAGED BIRD METAPHOR IN ‘‘SYMPATHY’’ CAN BE SEEN AS A SYMBOL FOR THAT TRADITION, AND IT YIELDS BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS.’’
proving that his integration into the mainstream of American literary life was possible. He continued writing journal articles throughout his life, and many of his strong opinions against racism were printed in leading newspapers and magazines. His interest in writing poetry and literature, however, prevailed as his choice of career. As is quoted in Benjamin Brawley’s Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet of His People (1936), Dunbar told a white sponsor, Dr. H. A. Tobey, that his life ambition was ‘‘To be able to interpret my own people through song and story, and to prove to the many that after all we are more human than African.’’ In Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the ‘‘Racial’’ Self (1987), Henry Louis Gates, Jr., points out that literacy was a matter of life and death for blacks in this country, the only way they could prove they were human and not primitive animals: ‘‘each piece of creative writing became a political statement.’’ Dunbar’s statement of purpose is thus necessarily both ambitious and defensive, for he has something ‘‘to prove to the many.’’ In the same work, Gates describes ‘‘the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture.’’ Dunbar began his career then with a huge burden to carry, like the bird with scarred wings. He had to express his racial self and his literary self, but in a manner that would pave the way for other African Americans without offending the dominant culture. His sponsors and audiences were mostly white in an era of high racial tension. He wanted to justify and interpret his people but also to be respected as an artist above all. By being accepted in the same spirit of the great poets he loved (John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Alfred
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Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), he would in one stroke accomplish something for his race and himself: ‘‘I consider that a colored poet of sufficient ability to make a name for himself would do more to enlighten and encourage the ambition of the multitude of colored people in America than almost anything else,’’ quotes Felton O. Best in Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872–1906 (1996). Dunbar made it clear, however, that he did not want to be just a curiosity—a Negro poet—he wanted equal respect: ‘‘He felt that he was first of all a man, then an American, and incidentally a Negro,’’ Brawley states. By being stereotyped early on as that great anomaly, a black poet, who could only properly interpret his race through dialect, Dunbar felt like an animal in a zoo. He was a prolific author in his brief thirty-three years. He was a journalist. He experimented with lyrics in standard English, southern black dialect, and white dialects, such as Irish American and German American. He was a librettist for an operetta and composed lyrics to popular songs in both dialect and standard speech; he was the author of four novels, some with white characters. He wrote short stories and plays, including one play in the form of an eighteenth-century English comedy of manners (‘‘Herrick’’). Many of his manuscripts were unpublished in his lifetime because the publishers only wanted the black dialect poems that sold well, about life on the old plantation. As these poems were often humorous, they reminded white audiences of the minstrel shows with blackface comedians making fun of the black race. Myron Simon, in a contribution to A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1975), quotes Dunbar’s response to this confusion: ‘‘I am sorry to find among intelligent people those who are unable to differentiate dialect as a philological branch from Negro minstrelsy.’’ Yet if he composed in standard English, Dunbar was accused of imitation. William Dean Howells had set the tone from the beginning in his 1896 review by saying that only Dunbar’s dialect poems were original. The cry was picked up by every reviewer after that; the standard English poems were considered weak. After his death, the poet’s wife, Alice, defended the standard English poems, saying that they were the poems that contained his own voice. By 1899, when he published ‘‘Sympathy,’’ Dunbar felt
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey From the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind (Broadway Books, 1998) is a nonfiction book for young adults widely read in modern-day schools. Journalist Ron Suskind tracked the progress of Cedric Jennings out of an inner city high school in Washington, D.C., to Brown University. The work is the true story of how one courageous teenager fought his way out of poverty and violence to realize a dream that Dunbar was denied. The longest short story Dunbar ever wrote was originally published in The Strength of Gideon (1900). ‘‘One Man’s Fortune,’’ reprinted in The Paul Laurence Dunbar Reader edited by Jay Martin and Gossie H. Hudson (Dodd, Mead, 1975) details the racist treatment of Bertram Halliday, a young black college graduate. In the story Dunbar demands equal treatment of blacks. The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 1 by Rayford Whittingham Logan, (Perseus, 1997) was first issued in 1954 and is a classic historical study of the racism of the post-
Reconstruction era. A scholar at Howard University, Logan was in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet.
Young-adult novel Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Pena (Delacorte, 2008) depicts biracial Danny Lopez’s dilemma of not belonging to either the white American or Mexican culture. Dialogue includes street vernacular and Spanish words.
Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, edited by Gloria T. Hull (W. W. Norton, 1984), is the journal of Dunbar’s widow for 1921 and 1926–1931. It gives a glimpse of the life of an intellectual black woman, writer, and political activist during the Harlem Renaissance.
Jean Wagner and Kenneth Douglas’s 1973 work Black Poets of the United States: From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes provides both a historical and biographical review of black poetry and major African American poets from early slavery to the Harlem Renaissance. Originally published in France in 1963, it provides a broad perspective.
imprisoned in many ways. He was making little progress in his career because of prejudice about the type of poetry he should produce. He was also working a menial job as a clerk in the Library of Congress. The inspiration for the caged bird in ‘‘Sympathy’’ came from looking out the barred windows of the library to the trees outside. In a 2006 contribution to Pacific Coast Philology, Camille Roman remarks on the symbolic irony of Dunbar trying to write African American poetry while imprisoned in the Library of Congress with the white man’s books that were the legacy of his oppressor.
theory, Gates describes a practice of the African oral tradition called ‘‘Signifyin(g)’’ that illuminates Dunbar’s poetry. Signifyin(g) is defined as wordplay using ‘‘repetition and reversal.’’ Even slave songs ‘‘signified’’ on the oppressor by taking phrases and reversing the meaning. Gates finds this principle of irony to be one of intertextuality, where one text comments on a previous text by playing upon a given phrase or idea. This oral tradition from Africa is at work in American jazz, the blues, spirituals, ragtime, hip-hop, and rap, and it occurs as well in written African American texts.
However, in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988), an important work on African American literary
Using this information, a reader can see new meaning in ‘‘Sympathy,’’ which could at first glance seem imitative. For instance, in the first
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stanza, Dunbar introduces the bird in springtime, a standard image from Romantic poetry to suggest the poet. Both Keats and Shelley used bird song as a metaphor for the spontaneity of the creative act. Shelley’s ode ‘‘To a Sky-Lark’’ and Keats’s ‘‘Ode to a Nightingale’’ are major statements of their poetic philosophies. Shelley compares the song of the skylark/poet to natural processes such as the wind spreading around the perfume of a flower. This image of scent coming out of a flower is also apparent in the first stanza of ‘‘Sympathy,’’ making it seem like a repeat of Shelley’s idea. In Dunbar’s version, however, the image is ironic with the perfume stealing out of the flower. This stealthy poetic act ‘‘signifies’’ on Shelley’s and Keats’s ecstatic and unfettered birds. Dunbar’s bird is crippled in a cage of racism and sings in spite of pain. That the caged bird symbol seemed right for African American literature is affirmed by poet Maya Angelou, who used Dunbar’s line for the title of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). Dunbar’s essay ‘‘Negro Music,’’ written the same year as ‘‘Sympathy,’’ could serve as a commentary on his poem. In the essay, reprinted in In His Own Voice: The Dramatic and Other Uncollected Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar (2002), Dunbar describes an insight he had when he heard some Africans singing at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893. He thought to himself: ‘‘It is that heritage.’’ Immediately, he connected to something in the African song and saw how it had become the heritage for African American artists. African music had ‘‘rich melody’’ and ‘‘mournful minor cadences’’ that touch the heart. The African ‘‘startles us,’’ but because the tradition had taken on a new depth in America, the ‘‘negro American thrills us.’’ Though white critics had accused him of being an imitator, he turns the tables by asserting the originality of African song: ‘‘With the black man’s heritage of song has come the heritage of sorrow, giving to his song the expression of a sorrowful sweetness which the mere imitator can never attain.’’ One thinks of spirituals and the blues, of all the great singers—Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, and James Brown. Dunbar calls the strain in all black music ‘‘running like the theme of a symphony—the strain a supplication to God for deliverance.’’ This statement describes the last stanza of the poem accurately, when the bird’s song is described as a prayer.
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The caged bird as a symbol for African American artists thus is positive and negative. Though enslaved, African Americans did not stop singing or creating beauty out of their pain. Dunbar is able to feel a positive continuity with ancestral song for the African American writer. This legacy he passed on to others to work out more fully. In a contribution to PostBellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture 1877–1919 (2006), Caroline Gebhard points out that black literature is not the creation of one artist alone, and that Dunbar was only the first to tackle the problem of dialect versus standard English. Later writers in the Harlem Renaissance learned to blend vernacular speech and standard English seamlessly together to carry on Dunbar’s experiment with voice. In an interview reprinted in In His Own Voice, Dunbar insists he has the right to move between languages as a poet: ‘‘I hope you are not one of those who would hold the negro down to a certain kind of poetry.’’ He further explains in the same interview, ‘‘The races have acted and reacted on each other.’’ Far from seeing literature as a segregated affair, he insists on the healthiness of intertextuality. Dunbar is one of the first African American artists to create a double voice in his poetry, to appeal to two audiences at once. Blacks understood the irony of ‘‘When Malindy Sings’’ in its praising blacks as better singers than whites; whites understood the music of the dialect, which Dunbar reclaimed as legitimate poetic speech. In the introduction to The Complete Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1992), Joanne M. Braxton observes Dunbar’s growth as a poet by comparing the two poems he called ‘‘Sympathy.’’ The first by that title appeared in Oak and Ivy (1892), his first collection. It is stilted and was not reprinted in later editions. The ‘‘Sympathy’’ written in 1899, Braxton states, ‘‘moves away from the imitation of European models and toward a strong poetic voice of his own.’’ In Crossing the Color Line, Best points out that no matter what critics have said, other black writers have consistently seen Dunbar as ‘‘the pioneer who paved the way for black writers to enter the literary profession.’’ Source: Susan Andersen, Critical essay on ‘‘Sympathy,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Charles Eaton Burch In the following critique, Burch maintains that Dunbar’s poetic forte is humorous dialect poetry, with a few standard English standouts.
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If Paul Laurence Dunbar is to continue to have a place in American literature, it seems to be fairly well agreed that it is to be accorded to him largely because of his poetry written in the Negro dialect. While such a statement is true in the main, it does not define the range of his work. His poetry in literary English has sufficient merit to warrant attention and study; and no survey of his poetry can be considered complete which totally ignores his English verse. . . . A few admirers of the poet’s work have endeavored to establish the fact that his English verse is ‘‘pregnant with a depth of thought.’’ To many, however, the application of this view, to the greater portion of his poetry is too sweeping. It is only for a very small part of his verse in literary English that such a claim can be made. For Dunbar’s lack of broad literary training prevented him from accomplishing any sustained flights in the established media of the language. (p. 469) ‘‘The Mystery’’ and ‘‘The Dirge’’ may . . . be included in this small group of selections. . . . Paul Dunbar was at home in dealing with rollicking humor. His dialect poems show him at his best in this field. However, his English humorous verse is interesting. One might with some justice claim that in dealing with Negro plantation life he was furnished with a wealth of humorous material. But since he had no such help in his English humorous verse, we are forced to conclude that he was of an essentially humorous nature. ‘‘At Cheshire Cheese’’ is indicative of what he was capable of doing at times. (p. 470) Our author was on his own ground when he turned to genuine pathos. His way was not strewn with roses. The few years of domestic happiness were soon overshadowed by the loss of companionship of the one who had exerted a real influence on his life and work. And when we add to this misfortune an enfeebled body it is not difficult to account for a portion of this poetry of pathos. However, there is a danger of overstressing the influence of these circumstances on his poetry. For many poems of this character were written before these forces began to operate in his life. Among the many poems of this character his ‘‘Ships That Pass in the Night’’ is perhaps his best effort. It is truly a modest contribution to the world’s literature of pathos. (pp. 470–71) Dunbar had a true appreciation for the beauty of external nature. In our day when the poetry of nature has come into its own and can claim some of the world’s greatest poets, there is
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a tendency to overlook the nature poetry of some of the lesser lights. . . . Dunbar, in his English verse, seldom sounded any new notes; his nature poetry generally follows the paths so well begun in the latter half of the eighteenth century. That he was capable of writing the poetry of the commonplace in nature may be determined from his treatment of Southern plantation life in his dialect poetry. Yet a few nature poems in literary English are worth mentioning. There is a touch of nature in ‘‘The Poet and the Song.’’ (p. 471) ‘‘The Drowsy Day’’ is full of suggestions of the gloomy mood of nature. . . . ‘‘The Sailor’s Song’’ breathes something of the rugged yet fascinating life of the ocean. . . . (p. 472) Dunbar was not only the first American Negro to gain a fairly large degree of recognition for his work in creative literature, he was also the first to give a true lyrical expression of the life of the Negro of the plantation. In examining his verse in literary English, one discovers the Dunbar who is proud of the struggles and aspirations of the ‘‘New Negro,’’ just as truly as his dialect poetry reveals his sympathy with the lowly life of his people. He never allows any of the larger happenings of his people to pass unnoticed. Often he is found paying a tribute to the departed Negro who has labored in behalf of his people; at times he exults in the victories of the colored soldiers of America, or proudly raises a song in honor of his race. ‘‘The Ode to Ethiopia’’ is perhaps better known among the masses of the colored people of America than any other one of his English poems. (pp. 472–73) Dunbar did not produce any great poems in literary English; however, he did add a few charming poems to the native literature. His was not the role of the great master with the mighty line. But his simple lay is so full of melody, so full of heart, that the lover of literature often leaves the major poet to spend many pleasant moments with him. (p. 473) Source: Charles Eaton Burch, ‘‘Dunbar’s Poetry in Literary English,’’ in Southern Workman, Vol. 50, No. 10, October 1921, pp. 469–73.
Joseph G. Bryant In the following critique, Bryant compares Dunbar’s poetry to the poetry of Robert Burns, based on their similarities regarding dialect poetry. [The] sparkling wit, the quaint and delightful humor, the individuality and charm of Dunbar’s poetry are not excelled by any lines from
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the pen of a Negro. No person can read his verse without being forcibly impressed that he is a remarkable man, a genius demanding attention. The New World has not produced a bard like him. Although distinctively American by birth and education, as well as a Negro, yet his prototype is on the other side of the Atlantic. Robert Burns and Dunbar, in many important particulars, are parallel poets. They seem to have been cast in the same mould; with limited educational advantages, both struggled up through poverty, and each wrote largely in the dialect of his clan. He is strong and original, and like Burns, lyrical in inspiration. Probably there never were two men of opposite races, so widely separated by time and distance, and yet so much alike in soul-qualities. With no desire and no doubt unconsciously, he has walked complete in the footprints of the eminent Scottish bard; has the same infirmity, animated by the same hope, and blessed with the same success. (p. 256) In Dunbar there is no threnody, not even distant clouds arch the sky. Hope and joy are the dominant notes of his song. No poet more effectively warms the cold side of our life and sends sunshine into grief-stricken souls than he. He laughs sorrow away; he takes us into the huts of the lowly and oppressed. There we find, amidst poverty and illiteracy, unfeigned contentment and true happiness; a smile is on every face, and hope displays her brightest gifts. No matter how sorrowful, who can read without considerable emotion ‘‘When de Co’n Pone’s Hot,’’ ‘‘The Colored Band,’’ ‘‘The Visitor,’’ ‘‘The Old Front Gate,’’ ‘‘De Way Tings Come,’’ and ‘‘Philosophy.’’ But not all his poetry bubbles with fun, at times he is a serious poet, and appeals strongly to the serious side of life, as does his ‘‘Weltschmertz.’’ It is full of tender sympathy; it touches chords which vibrate throughout the poles of our nature; he makes us feel that he takes our sorrows and makes them his own, and helps us to bear up when burdened with woe. ‘‘The Fount of Tears,’’ ‘‘Life’s Tragedy,’’ ‘‘The Haunted Oak,’’ and the fifth lyric of ‘‘Love and Sorrow’’ reveal a high order of poetical genius; he reaches the deepest spiritual recesses of our being. (pp. 256–57) I prefer ‘‘The Rugged Way’’ to Lowell’s ‘‘After the Burial.’’ ‘‘The Unsung Heroes’’ has all the imagination and pathos of Bryant’s ‘‘Marion’s Men;’’ ‘‘The Black Sampson of Brandywine’’ will live as long as his ‘‘African Chief.’’ Read Bryant’s and Dunbar’s ‘‘Lincoln’’—the black poet does not
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suffer by comparison. I do not in the least wish to convey the impression that Dunbar is a greater poet than Bryant; they move in different parts of the poetical firmament. Each is a master in his respective sphere. As a writer of blank verse Bryant has no equal in America; and as a lyrical poet with a large vein of rich humor Dunbar is without a peer in the Western Continent. (p. 257) Source: Joseph G. Bryant, ‘‘Negro Poetry,’’ in Colored American Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 5, May 1905, pp. 254–57.
W. D. Howells In the following review, Howell’s critique of the dialect Dunbar uses in his poetry explains how dialect became a milestone for the poet. [Howells was the chief progenitor of American Realism and one of the most influential American literary critics of the late nineteenth century. He wrote nearly three dozen novels, few of which are read today. Despite his eclipse, he stands as one of the major literary figures of the nineteenth century: he successfully weaned American literature away from the sentimental romanticism of its infancy, earning the popular sobriquet ‘‘the Dean of American Letters.’’ Through Realism, a theory central to his fiction and criticism, Howells sought to disperse ‘‘the conventional acceptations by which men live on easy terms with themselves’’ that they might ‘‘examine the grounds of their social and moral opinions.’’ To accomplish this, according to Howells, the writer must strive to record impressions of everyday life in detail, endowing characters with true-to-life motives and avoiding authorial comment in the narrative. In addition to many notable studies of the works of his friends Mark Twain and Henry James, Howells reviewed three generations of international literature, urging Americans to read the works of E´mile Zola, Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Emily Dickinson, and other important authors. Dunbar was another writer that Howells introduced to the reading public. In the following excerpt from Harper’s Weekly, he reviews Majors and Minors, praising Dunbar’s dialect verse. This review proved to be a milestone in the poet’s career. A year later, however, Dunbar sadly remarked: ‘‘I see now very clearly that Mr. Howells has done me irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid down regarding my dialect verse.’’] [Mr. Dunbar] is a real poet whether he speaks a dialect or whether he writes a language. He calls his little book Majors and Minors, the
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Majors being in our American English, and the Minors being in dialect, the dialect of the middlesouth negroes and the middle-south whites; for the poet’s ear has been quick for the accent of his neighbors as well as for that of his kindred. I have no means of knowing whether he values his Majors more than his Minors; but I should not suppose it at all unlikely, and I am bound to say none of them are despicable. In very many I find the proofs of honest thinking and true feeling, and in some the record of experience, whose genuineness the reader can test by his own. . . . Most of these pieces, however, are like most of the pieces of most young poets, cries of passionate aspiration and disappointment, more or less personal or universal, which except for the negro face of the author one could not find specially notable. It is when we come to Mr. Dunbar’s Minors that we feel ourselves in the presence of a man with a direct and a fresh authority to do the kind of thing he is doing. . . . One sees how the poet exults in his material, as the artist always does; it is not for him to blink its commonness, or to be ashamed of its rudeness; and in his treatment of it he has been able to bring us nearer to the heart of primitive human nature in his race than anyone else has yet done. The range between appetite and emotion is not great, but it is here that his race has hitherto had its being, with a lift now and then far above and beyond it. A rich, humorous sense pervades his recognition of this fact, without excluding a fond sympathy, and it is the blending of these which delights me in all his dialect verse. . . . Several of the pieces are pure sentiment, like ‘‘The Deserted Plantation’’; but these without lapsing into sentimentality recall the too easy pathos of the pseudonegro poetry of the minstrel show. . . . Mr. Dunbar’s race is nothing if not lyrical, and he comes by his rhythm honestly. But what is better, what is finer, what is of larger import, in his work is what is conscious and individual in it. He is, so far as I know, the first man of his color to study his race objectively, to analyze it to himself, and then to represent it in art as he felt it and found it to be; to represent it humorously, yet tenderly, and above all so faithfully that we know the portrait to be undeniably like. A race which has reached this effect in any of its members can no longer be held wholly uncivilized; and intellectually Mr. Dunbar makes a stronger claim for the negro than the negro yet has done. . . .
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I am speaking of him as a black poet, when I should be speaking of him as a poet; but the notion of what he is insists too strongly for present impartiality. I hope I have not praised him too much, because he has surprised me so very much; for his excellences are positive and not comparative. If his Minors had been written by a white man, I should have been struck by their very uncommon quality; I should have said that they were wonderful divinations. But since they are expressions of a race-life from within the race, they seem to me indefinitely more valuable and significant. I have sometimes fancied that perhaps the negroes thought black, and felt black; that they were racially so utterly alien and distinct from ourselves that there never could be common intellectual and emotional ground between us, and that whatever eternity might do to reconcile us, the end of time would find us as far asunder as ever. But this little book has given me pause in my speculation. Here, in the artistic effect at least, is white thinking and white feeling in a black man, and perhaps the human unity, and not the race unity, is the precious thing, the divine thing, after all. God hath made of one blood all nations of men; perhaps the proof of this saying is to appear in the arts, and our hostilities and prejudices are to vanish in them. Mr. Dunbar, at any rate, seems to have fathomed the souls of his simple white neighbors, as well as those of his own kindred; and certainly he has reported as faithfully what passes in them as any man of our race has yet done with respect to the souls of his. It would be very incomplete recognition of his work not to speak particularly of the non-negro dialect pieces, and it is to the lover of homely and tender poetry, as well as the student of tendencies, that I commend such charming sketches as ‘‘Speakin o’ Christmas,’’ ‘‘After a Visit,’’ ‘‘Lonesome,’’ and ‘‘The Spellin’ Bee.’’ They are good, very good. . . . Source: W. D. Howells, ‘‘A Review of Majors and Minors,’’ in Harper’s Weekly, June 26, 1896, p. 630.
SOURCES Best, Felton O., Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872–1906, Kendall/Hunt Publishers, 1996, pp. 44, 110. Brawley, Benjamin, Paul Lawrence Dunbar: Poet of His People, University of North Carolina Press, 1936, reprint ed., Kennikat Press, 1967, pp. 4, 37, 76.
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Braxton, Joanne M., Introduction to The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, University Press of Virginia, 1993, p. xxi.
Simon, Myron, ‘‘Dunbar and Dialect Poetry,’’ in A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Jay Martin, Dodd, Mead, 1975, p. 121.
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, ‘‘Negro in Literature,’’ in In His Own Voice: The Dramatic and Other Uncollected Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Herbert Woodward Martin and Ronald Primeau, Ohio University Press, 2002, pp. 206–207; originally published in New York Commercial 1898, Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection, reel IV, box 16, Ohio Historical Society.
Turner, Darwin T., ‘‘The Poet and the Myths,’’ in A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Jay Martin, Dodd, Mead, 1975, pp. 59–74.
———, ‘‘Negro Music,’’ in In His Own Voice: The Dramatic and Other Uncollected Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Herbert Woodward Martin and Ronald Primeau, Ohio University Press, 2002, pp. 184– 85; originally published in Chicago Record, 1899, Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection, reel IV, box 18, Ohio Historical Society. ———, The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton, University Press of Virginia, 1993. ———, The Paul Laurence Dunbar Reader: A Selection of the Best of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poetry and Prose, Including Writings Never Before Available in Book Form, edited by Jay Martin and Gossie H. Hudson, Dodd, Mead, 1975. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the ‘‘Racial’’ Self, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 25–26, 29. ———, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 66. Gebhard, Caroline, ‘‘Inventing a ‘Negro Literature’: Race, Dialect, and Gender in the Early Work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson,’’ in Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture 1877–1919, edited by Barbara McCaskill and Caroline Gebhard, New York University Press, 2006, pp. 162–78. Hudson, Gossie H., ‘‘The Crowded Years: Paul Laurence Dunbar in History,’’ in A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Jay Martin, Dodd, Mead, 1975, pp. 227–42. Lawson, Victor, Dunbar Critically Examined, Associated Publishers, 1941, p. 78. Metcalf, E. W., Jr., Paul Laurence Dunbar: A Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1975, pp. 131–33. Revell, Peter, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Twayne’s ‘‘United States Author’’ series, No. 298, Twayne Publishers, 1979, pp. 90–91, 93, 190. Roman, Camille, ‘‘The Caged Bird’s Song and Its (Dis)Contents,’’ in Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 41, 2006, pp. 32–38.
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FURTHER READING Alexander, Eleanor, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: A History of Love and Violence among the African American Elite, New York University Press, 2001. Alexander chronicles the difficult marriage of the Dunbars and why they separated due to drinking and domestic violence. She also discusses other middle class African American marriages showing sociologically how the pressures of race and gender at the turn of the century eroded relationships. Brown, Fahamisha Patricia, Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture, Rutgers University Press, 1999. Brown focuses on the features of African American oral traditions that appear in vernacular speech and modern poetry. For instance, the call-and-response repetition, preaching, and the boast are highlighted in the works of various black poets. Du Bois, W. E. B., The Gift of Black Folk: The Negro in the Making of America, 1924, Square One Publishers, 2009. Sociologist, scholar, and civil rights activist Du Bois documents the contributions of African Americans in an attempt to counter negative stereotypes. He shows black Americans as explorers, inventors, artists, soldiers, and farmers. The book was reissued to mark the centennial of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which Du Bois helped to found. Dunbar, Paul Laurence, The Sport of the Gods, Dodd, Mead, 1902, Signet Classic, 1999. This realistic novel was ahead of its time in describing a southern black family moving to New York City and facing the same forces of racism as in the South because blacks had no legal protection.
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Two Eclipses ‘‘Two Eclipses,’’ is the English translation of the title of a poem written in Hebrew in 1044 by the Spanish poet Shmuel HaNagid. The poem documents two eclipses, one lunar and one solar, that occurred in the month of Kislev that year. In the Hebrew calendar, Kislev is the third month of the civil year and the ninth month of the religious year; it usually corresponds to a thirty-day month that falls in November–December. The lunar eclipse occurred on November 8, 1044, between 11:00 in the evening and 2:00 in the morning; the solar eclipse took place on November 22 from 8:00 to 11:00 in the morning.
SHMUEL HANAGID C. 1044
‘‘Two Eclipses’’ was included in Ben Kohelet, one of HaNagid’s three collections of poetry. This title means ‘‘After Ecclesiastes’’ referring to the twenty-first book of the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, though sometimes HaNagid’s collection is referred to as ‘‘The Little Book of Ecclesiastes,’’ reflecting the title HaNagid’s son gave to it after his father’s death. The poems in this collection, including ‘‘Two Eclipses,’’ are regarded as HaNagid’s most mature poems; they consist of epigrammatic verses that describe natural phenomena (‘‘Gazing through the Night,’’‘‘The Earthquake’’) or offer meditations on death (‘‘You Felt the Fear of Death,’’‘‘Ask the Dead and They’ll Tell You’’). By titling the collection ‘‘After Ecclesiastes,’’ one of the more philosophical books of the Old Testament, HaNagid announced that the poems would be meditative reflections from a philosopher rather than a statement of religious
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doctrine from a rabbi or theologian. Perhaps, taken together, they would reflect Ecclesiastes 1:4: ‘‘A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.’’
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY HaNagid was a poet, statesman, merchant, and military leader. Western writers often alter the Hebrew ‘‘Shmuel’’ to ‘‘Samuel,’’ sometimes Ishmael, and his last name is variously written as HaNagid, ha-Nagid, Hannagid, and ha’Nagid. He was born in 993 as Shmuel ben Yosef ha-Levi to a prominent Jewish family in Cordoba, Spain, and received a classical education, studying Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, including the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam. Not a great deal is known about his early life. As a young man he probably earned his living in the spice business and in international trade. When the Berbers, an invading tribe from North Africa that had recently converted to Islam, overthrew the Islamic caliphate of Cordoba in 1013 after a three-year civil war, HaNagid, along with many others, fled. (A caliphate is a unified Muslim territory, similar to a nation or empire). He settled in the port city of Malaga, Spain, where he again engaged in trade. According to tradition, he was approached by a maidservant at the court of Habbus, the Muslim king of Grenada, who asked him to write letters for her to her master, the king’s vizier. (Vizier is an Anglicized form of the Arabic word wazir and simply means ‘‘high official.’’) Habbus eventually saw the letters and was impressed by HaNagid’s wisdom and his skill with Arabic calligraphy. Accordingly, he gave HaNagid a position first as a tax collector (based probably on the belief that a Jew would find it easier to collect taxes from other Jews than would a non-Jew), then as secretary, then as assistant vizier, and finally as vizier. He became embroiled in a dispute that led to his dismissal, but he later returned to court as the assistant to the king’s vizier. Spanish Jews were proud of HaNagid’s success, so they elected him ‘‘Nagid,’’ or governor of Spain’s Jewish community, in 1027; in this way Shmuel ha-Levi became Shmuel HaNagid, or Samuel the Governor (or Samuel the Prince). He continued to play a prominent role at court, and when King Habbus died in 1037, his son and successor, King Badis, promoted HaNagid to the
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position of chief vizier of Granada. The king also put HaNagid in charge of the Muslim army. In the years that followed, he served as a military leader in battle and in a role analogous to today’s minister or secretary of defense. As part of King Badis’s administration, he played a key role in turning Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain, into one of the wealthiest and most powerful regions. (Andalusia is a large region consisting of several provinces, including Cordoba and Grenada; complicating matters is that Cordoba and Grenada are also the names of the capital cities of the provinces by the same names.) HaNagid also wrote a Hebrew grammar, commentaries on the Old Testament and Jewish law, and poetry, though the dates when he completed his three collections of poems are not known. He was widely known throughout the Jewish community for his generosity and his willingness to provide support, both moral and material, for students and scholars. Through his many accomplishments, he came to be regarded as one of the most powerful and influential Jews in medieval Spain. He died in 1056, probably from the effects of exhaustion after leading yet another military campaign.
POEM TEXT My friend, are you sleeping? Rise and wake the dawn, look up at the sky like a leopard skin strippled above us, and see the moon where it should be full, go dark like a kettle, or kiln, like the face of a girl— half of it flushed, the other darkened in shadow. Return and glance at the sun, brought to the end of the month in dimness, its halo of light on the darkness, like a crown on the head of a Libyan princess, and the earth whose sun has set, reddened—as though with tears. Both of the beacons were stricken in the space of a single month by Him whose dominion is splendor and strength; He covered the moon with His circle of earth, and the sun with His moon: this is the work of the Lord who toys with creation.
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He fashioned patches of dark in the moon, and the sun He created clear, therefore I liken them now
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in their dimness against the dark, to women bereaved: the face of the one is bruised, the other both bruised and wounded— the light of day on a day gone dim, and the light of night darkened at evening during the watch. Like an angry king who brings trouble on his lords in their own domains, first He struck the brightness of night, and afterwards blotted the daylight, like a king who prepared a poisonous cup for his mistress, and then for his queen. Behold what happened—look closely in wonder, study it well, and read: Yours is the greatness, who brought the light in its weight and measures, and darkened the moon at its cycle’s center, like a bird caught in a snare. You’ll do it again in five months more; looking onto the earth, you’ll make it reel like a drunkard. You’ve ordered the moth and it eats the Bear and Orion in great constellation; you fixed for the living among them a place like a shield; and all when you rule will be trodden as one, though not with a shout in a winepress. Yours is the glory, yours entire, every horse and chariot houghed. It’s you who brings on heat in winter, and winter, at summer’s height; you who upends the abyss, who brings affliction into the sea like a woman in labor; you who’ll cast toward all the living—death, as the arrow flies to its target; you on the bitter and great and terrible day of judgment who will wake me and judge all who’ve forsaken the statues, commandments, and Law.
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POEM SUMMARY Lines 1–15 The speaker in ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ begins by addressing an unseen friend who appears to still be
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In stanza 2, the speaker notes that both of these sources of light, which he compares to beacons, were darkened in the same month. He does not use the word ‘‘God,’’ but he makes it clear that God, a source of power, majesty, and brilliance, was the source of the two eclipses. In one case God used the earth to cover the moon; in the other he used the moon to cover the sun. The speaker concludes the stanza by noting that the two eclipses were the work of God and that God plays with the worlds he created.
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If there remains not a trace of my righteousness, may your mercy be near.
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sleeping in the morning. He urges the friend to wake up, to wake up the dawn, and to look at the sky, which has the mottled appearance of the skin of a leopard. He notes that the moon is supposed to be full but that it is going dark, and he compares it to a kiln, a kettle, and a girl’s face, part of which is blushing. He notes that half of the moon is darkened, as if in shadow. The speaker then draws the friend’s attention to the sun, which later in the month became dim. He describes a full solar eclipse, where the sun is darkened but a rim of light filters out around the edges. He compares the sight of the sun in eclipse to a crown on the head of a princess from Libya (a nation in North Africa). The result is that the sun has set, casting a reddish glow. He compares the effect to the earth being in tears.
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When you place my deeds in judgment’s scale, may the side of evil, lighter, rise. On the day you lift me up from my dust I’ll turn and my spirit in fear of your wrath will flee, and you’ll say: ‘‘Peace be upon you; be still, and do not fear.’’
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The speaker begins stanza 3 by noting that the moon was made with darker portions but that the sun was made entirely clear and uniform. This prompts the speaker to draw a comparison between the dimmed sun and moon on the one hand and grieving women on the other. One of the women has a face that appears to be bruised, presumably like the sun; the other woman’s face is both bruised and injured, presumably like the moon. The speaker then notes that the sun provides daytime light but that the day has gone dim. Similarly, the moon is a source of light at night, but it too has been darkened in the evening, just at the time that guards begin to watch over the city. In a new sentence, the speaker compares God to a king. Just as an earthly king might become angered and direct his wrath against lords who rule territories within the kingdom, so God, the heavenly king, turns his anger against day and night. With a lunar eclipse, he strikes a blow against the night’s source of light, then with a solar eclipse he blots out the daylight. The speaker then compares God’s ctions
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to those of a king who gives poison first to his mistress, then to his wife, the queen. The speaker then urges the listener to see what happened, to examine the phenomena closely, and to read the lines that follow. The stanza ends with a colon rather than a period, suggesting a change in the poem.
Lines 40–52 With stanza 4, the speaker is no longer addressing the friend. He is now addressing God, and it is these lines that the speaker urges his friend to read at the end of the preceding stanza. Accordingly, the stanzas that follow are written in the second person, with ‘‘you’’ and ‘‘your’’ referring to God. He begins by noting that God’s greatness enabled him to create light, but it is that same greatness that enables him to darken the moon at the middle of its cycle. He then compares the darkened moon to a trapped rabbit. The speaker then notes that five months later there will be another lunar eclipse—which in fact turned out to be true; on May 3, 1045, a lunar eclipse occurred from 7:00 to 10:00 in the morning. God then will look at the world he created and cause it to become dizzy as though drunk. At this point, the speaker becomes slightly obscure. He makes reference to a moth, but this is an alternative meaning for the word Ash, which is the name of a star mentioned in the biblical book of Job. The star/moth is then said to consume star constellations called the Bear (Ursa Major, the constellation that includes the Big Dipper) and Orion (a prominent constellation named for the hunter by the same name in Greek mythology). Within the star constellations God created the earth, where living things could exist. The speaker concludes the stanza by acknowledging the power of God, who can tread upon all of his creation. In the same way, people tread upon grapes in a winepress in the process of making wine. When they do so, they shout, perhaps in triumph and joy. When God treads on his creation, there will be no shouting.
stars. ‘‘Horse’’ would possibly refer to Pegasus, named after a winged horse in Greek mythology, while ‘‘chariot’’ would possibly refer to Auriga, the Horse Driver, a constellation named after the mythological figure who invented the chariot because his feet were deformed and he was lame. The speaker goes on to note that God can turn the weather hot in winter and cold in summer. God can also turn the oceans upside down and bring turmoil to the seas, which he compares to a woman in the pains of giving birth. Ultimately, God can cause all living things to die, throwing death at them in the same way that an arrow finds its target. The speaker says that on Judgment Day God will awaken him—just as the speaker awakened his friend at the beginning of the poem—and will pass judgment on everyone who has broken God’s commandments and Jewish law. The repetition of awakening suggests that the eclipses are a form of God’s judgment, prefiguring the greater judgment that will take place when a person dies.
Lines 67–72 The penultimate stanza continues with the theme of judgment. The speaker says that God will weigh his actions, and he expresses hope that the evil side of the scale will be lighter and will therefore rise under the heavier weight of the side of the scale filled with good; the scale the poet envisions is a beam scale with pans hanging on each side. The speaker goes on to say that on that day God will raise his soul from the dust of his body but that the speaker will attempt to flee because he fears God’s anger. He expresses hope, though, that God will offer him peace and comfort and will urge him not to feel fear.
Lines 73–74 The final stanza of the poem consists of just two lines. The speaker acknowledges the possibility that on the Day of Judgment, God will find no righteousness in his soul. He hopes, then, that God will show mercy toward him; God’s mercy at the end of the poem is thus a counterpoint to his anger.
Lines 53–66 In stanza 5 the speaker continues to pay tribute to the glory of God. He says that this glory belongs entirely to God and that it is recognized by every horse and chariot that has been houghed. This word refers to the severing of tendons on the back legs of captured horses in ancient times. It is possible that the speaker’s references to horses and chariots are references to constellations of
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THEMES God The central theme of ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ is the power and majesty of God. The poem begins as the speaker sees a lunar eclipse, then describes a
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Write a poem based on your observations of an astronomical event: an eclipse, a meteor shower, a phase of the moon, a rainbow, or the conjunction of planets in the sky. Pictures and illustrations of astronomical events are available on many Web sites or in books about astronomy. In your poem, include not just observations but your sense of the meaning or significance of the event. A great many astronomical observations were made in the medieval Arabic world, particularly during the Golden Age when HaNagid lived. Conduct research into the history of medieval astronomy. Who were some major astronomers? What discoveries did they make? What words derived from Arabic are still used in the field of astronomy? Present your findings in an oral report, using as many visual aids as possible. In the biblical Old Testament—the scripture that HaNagid would have studied and learned—eclipses were often seen as tokens of God’s anger. Using the Internet, conduct a search for references to eclipses in the Old Testament. Prepare a list of the eclipses (and perhaps other astronomical events as well) and the reactions of people to them. What significance did the writer of the biblical book attach to the eclipse or other heavenly event? Present your findings in an essay. Using the Internet, conduct research into Cordoba, Spain, where HaNagid was born and spent his early years. Many of the buildings and monuments from that time survive. Imagine that you are a tour guide. Download pictures of medieval Cordoba and, using PowerPoint, take your classmates on a virtual ‘‘walking tour’’ of the city that
solar eclipse during the same month. In biblical tradition, eclipses were seen as a sign of God’s wrath. God was presumed to be angry at
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HaNagid would have known. Be sure to explain to your classmates what you are showing them and why it is significant for an understanding of medieval life at that time and in that place.
In contemporary life, hostility between Muslims and Jews often erupts into violence. In medieval Spain, though, Muslims and Jews lived side by side, and although HaNagid was a Jew, he served in the court of a Muslim king. Conduct research into the history of Jewish-Muslim relations during the medieval period. To what extent did the two communities cooperate? To what extent did they compete? What impact did Christians living in Muslim-Jewish lands have, if any? Present your findings in a written report.
Imagine that you are a translator, trying to translate a poem such as ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ from medieval Hebrew into modern English. With every word and phrase, you would have choices to make. Thus, for example, the opening lines of HaNagid’s poem might have been translated as: ‘‘My friend, as you still asleep? / Get up and awaken the morning, / look up to the heavens / like the mottled skin of a leopard over our heads.’’ Use synonyms to write an alternative translation of the poem and be prepared to explain how your ‘‘translation’’ creates a different effect on the reader.
Denise Levertov was a modern American poet who wrote both for adults and young adults. Locate her poem ‘‘Flickering Mind,’’ found in her 1959 collection A Door in the Hive, and compare the nature of her religious experience with HaNagid’s in an essay.
humans for transgressing his laws, so he in a sense inverted the natural order by blotting out the sun or the moon, striking fear into the hearts
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of people who witnessed these unusual events. That both of these events would occur in the same month would at any time be highly unusual, and during the medieval period it would have been a sure sign of God’s displeasure. The speaker of the poem goes on to call the reader’s attention to the greatness of God, his strength and brilliance. God is so powerful that he can move planets and thus play with his creation. Clearly God is like an angry king when he toys with his planets and stars. The second part of the poem, beginning with the fourth stanza, is then addressed directly to God, who holds power over light and dark, over the planets and all the constellations of stars. He created the earth as a place that would shield living things, but he is so powerful that he can tread on all of his creation whenever he wishes. The speaker goes on to note further instances of the majesty and power of God, which every captive horse and chariot (perhaps a symbolic allusion to other constellations of stars in the heavens) recognizes. God has power over heat and cold and can invert them, just as he can toy with the arrangement of planets and stars. He can cause turmoil in the oceans. Ultimately, he has the ability to impose death on every living creature. Death, then, at least for humans, entails judgment, and the speaker fears that day because he, along with other humans, has not always followed God’s law. God has the ability to raise the speaker’s soul from the dust he leaves behind—his body—and when the speaker stands before God, he will tremble with fear. The poem, though, ends on an optimistic note, for the speaker says that God will soothe him and allay his fears. God can be an angry God, but he can also be merciful, and that mercy is just as much part of God’s majesty as is his wrath.
Sin A theme closely related to the power of God is that of the sinfulness and failures of humans. In the Jewish biblical tradition, the Jews and God enjoy a special relationship with each other. The covenant God’s chosen people have with God imposes responsibilities on each. Humans, though, because of their sinfulness and imperfections, often break the covenant. They fail to follow God’s laws, such as the Ten Commandments. The poet also makes reference to Law, which likely means Jewish law. This law, called the Halakha in Hebrew, consists of the total body of Jewish law contained in the Old
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Testament, particularly the first five books, which Jews refer to as the Torah. In these books are 613 mitzvot, or laws and principles of ethics every Jew is to follow. Added to the mitzvot is the Talmud, or Talmudic law, which is a record of discussions by Jewish rabbis that expand on and interpret Jewish law. This body of law applies not only to a Jew’s religious life but to his everyday life as well. Following biblical tradition, the poet in ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ regards eclipses as a sign of God’s anger. The eclipses represent God’s judgment on his people, causing fear and consternation. The darkness caused by the eclipses prefigures the darkness of death, when God will awaken the poet—just as the poet awakens his friend to the lunar eclipse at the beginning of the poem—and judge him. The poet recognizes his own human sinfulness but expresses hope that on the Day of Judgment, the scales in which his deeds are weighed will show that good has outweighed evil. Nevertheless, the poet expresses fear of facing God on the Day of Judgment, though he also describes his confidence that God will calm his fears and, perhaps, show mercy for the poet’s lack of righteousness.
Nature In the modern scientific era, the tendency is to think of humans as somehow separate from the natural order. The natural order is something that humans aspire to control in order to conquer hunger, cold and heat, disease, and ultimately death itself. The modern scientific method turns nature into something ‘‘other,’’ something outside of humanity to be studied and understood. The medieval religious outlook, however, saw nature in a very different light. Medieval philosophers tended to accept the Hellenistic (ancient Greek) concept that the natural order was governed by immutable laws; one of these laws was that the natural order consisted of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. This point of view is hinted at in ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ with its reference to the dust of the earth, the heat and cold of the air, the fire of the sun that reddens the earth, and the waters of the ocean. Jewish thinkers, though, were steeped in the traditions of the Old Testament and of rabbinical literature, which placed less emphasis on immutable laws and more on the concept of a divine creator who directly regulates events for a divine purpose. Astronomy was a particularly fertile field
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Partial eclipse (Image copyright Vasca, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
for this line of thought, for through astronomical observation the medieval philosopher—someone like HaNagid—was able to reconcile the two views of nature. On the one hand, the regular, predictable movements of the planets and stars— a regularity that enabled HaNagid to predict the eclipse that would occur five months hence—suggested that the universe operated according to immutable laws, much as the Greeks had thought. On the other hand, following Jewish tradition, these regularities were a certain sign of a creator whose creation was a physical expression of his power and greatness. Thus, the eclipses that form the center of HaNagid’s poem are not simply natural phenomena to be studied and understood. Rather, they are manifestations of a divine will to which humans have to submit.
Simile and Metaphor
unlike objects using words such as ‘‘like’’ and ‘‘as.’’ Early in the poem, for example, the sky is said to have the appearance of a stippled leopard skin. Because of the eclipse, the sky goes dark and is explicitly compared to a kettle, a kiln, and a girl’s face. The solar eclipse created a ring of light that is compared to a crown of light on a dark-skinned Libyan princess’s head. The eclipse is said to redden the earth, and a comparison is drawn with a face reddened by tears. Because of the eclipses, the sun and the moon are compared to women who are mourning. God is likened to an angry king who sows trouble among his lords and who offers a poisoned cup to his mistress and to his queen. The eclipsed moon is compared to a rabbit caught in a trap, and when the poet predicts the future eclipse, he says that God will make the earth dizzy, like someone who has had too much to drink. When God brings turmoil to the sea, the sea is like a woman in pain from giving birth. When God brings death to people, it is likened to an arrow finding its target.
A primary poetic device HaNagid uses in ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ is simile, the comparison of otherwise
In addition to simile, HaNagid also uses metaphor, the comparison of otherwise unlike
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things by seeing them as equivalent. Thus, at the start of the poem, the dawning day is said to be awakening. The sun and moon, and sources of light, are equated with beacon lights. The dark patches of the moon are bruises. Metaphors of weighing and scales are also used. God created the light and weighed and measured it, and later, on the Day of Judgment, God will weigh the poet’s deeds on a scale; the poet expresses hope that the side of the scale containing good is heavy enough to outweigh the side containing evil, which will rise, just as the poet’s soul will rise out of the dust of his body.
Meter One of the chief difficulties of translating poetry is retaining some sense of the prosody of the original—that is, the original’s regular metrical (rhythmic) patterns. These patterns are particularly important for medieval Hebrew poetry, for it was commonplace for poets such as HaNagid to adhere to the metrical forms used throughout much of the Old Testament. The chief characteristic of these forms is that they were based on a hierarchy of elements. The most elemental was the verset, consisting of two or three stress units. Two or three versets made up a poetic line, two or three lines made up a strophe, and two or three strophes made up a stanza. Stanzas would be combined into sections, and the poem as a whole would comprise sections. In ‘‘Two Eclipses,’’ HaNagid generally follows this tradition. Thus, for example, the first line of the poem consists of two stress units, the second of three, the third line two, and the fourth line three. Lines within each stanza form natural groupings. Thus, in the first stanza, lines 1–9 form a strophe, as do lines 10–15. Overall, the poem consists of seven stanzas. The first three form one section of the poem, and the next three form a second section. The final stanza, consisting of just two lines, forms a kind of coda that balances God’s mercy with his anger. It should be noted that HaNagid does not adhere to this metrical form in a rigid manner. The translation has more of a free verse quality, with lines of alternate lengths, stanzas of alternate lengths, and so on. Nevertheless, the poem’s metrics retain the metrical feel of the Old Testament poetry that HaNagid would have known intimately.
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Imagery The author ties ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ together with patterns of imagery. These patterns impose unity on the poem, linking one part in parallel fashion with other parts. Chief among these patterns of imagery is that of light and dark, as would be expected in a poem about the sun and the moon. At the beginning of the poem, the moon goes dark, and the speaker says that it is darkened like the face of a girl who is blushing. The ring of light that escapes around the edges of a solar eclipse contrasts with the darkness of the head of a princess from Libya. The sun and the moon are compared to beacons, which shed light. The moon is said to have been created with dark patches, as opposed to the clearness of the sun, and during the eclipses, the sun and the moon are dim, surrounded by darkness. Lines 29 and 30 explicitly refer to the light of daytime and light shed by the moon at night, but both became darkened. God created the light and dark, so God has dominion over them; he created the light of the moon by striking it, as a metalworker would strike an object in a forge. Similar patterns of imagery unite the poem, although HaNagid does not use these patterns as extensively. The imagery of faces is used twice, once in suggesting that the darkening moon resembles the face of a blushing girl, once when he compares both eclipses to the face of bereaved women. Imagery associated with royalty is also used. During the solar eclipse, the ring of light that surrounds the moon is seen as a crown on the head of a princess, and God is repeatedly described in terms that suggest royalty, particularly in being an angry king who is the cause of trouble among the lords that rule God’s domains.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Muslim Spain The early medieval period was a tumultuous one in Spain. Muslim Arab forces crossed the Mediterranean Sea in 711, landed on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and conquered the peninsula within a period of just a few years. This conquest expanded the scope of the growing Muslim empire. In 750, civil war resulted in the end of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus, Syria, which had ruled
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1040s: Hebrew poetry tends to be biblical poetry, drawing on themes, styles, and particularly the language and vocabulary of the Old Testament. Today: Modern poets writing in Hebrew continue to link their verse to biblical traditions but draw on a wider, more contemporary vocabulary and style that reflect the concerns of modern life. 1040s: The kingdoms of Spain are under the control of a Muslim dynasty, though the region has large Jewish and Christian populations. Today: Spain is largely a Catholic country, though many of the monuments that Muslims built in the Middle Ages still exist and
the Islamic empire. (‘‘Umayyad’’ is the family name of the ruling dynasty at the time.) It was replaced by the Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled from Baghdad (now the capital of Iraq), launching what came to be called the Golden Age of Arabic culture—a time when the arts and sciences flourished. One survivor of the Umayyads, though, fled to Cordoba, Spain, where he established a caliphate that in time rivaled that of the Abbasids. A major project he undertook was the construction of the Great Mosque of Cordoba. In particular, he established a court where scientists and men of letters gathered, resulting in the emergence of secular poetry written both in Arabic and in Hebrew. Cordoba grew in power and became renowned for its art, letters, textiles, architecture, libraries, and sophistication. This was the environment in which HaNagid lived and wrote.
Biblical Poetry A medieval Jew writing in Hebrew, including such figures as HaNagid, wrote poetry that had
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are regarded as important parts of the nation’s heritage. Muslims make up just over 2 percent of the population are are a growing population in Spain.
1040s: Religious writers regard natural phenomena such as eclipses as the work of God and manifestations of God’s power and greatness; natural disasters or unusual occurrences are often regarded as a sign of God’s anger. Today: While many people still see the hand of God in the natural order, most regard eclipses, along with natural disasters and other natural phenomena, in a scientific rather than a religious light.
firm links with the Old Testament, particularly the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Hebrew poetry during this time period drew heavily on the themes, style, metrics, and language of the Old Testament, much of which was written in verse form. The purpose of poetry was not to explore the state of mind of the individual but to see creation as a manifestation of the greatness and power of God. Accordingly, medieval biblical poetry dealt with such topics as creation, the patriarchs, the history of the Jewish people, prophecies, and the like. When such a poet examined a natural phenomenon such as an eclipse, the purpose of the poem was not to make minute observations, nor was it to explore the psychological state of mind of the poet in response to the event. Rather, it was to see the event in the context of man’s relationship with God. In this sense, medieval biblical poetry is very different from modern confessional poetry, which is far more introspective and far more focused on the psychology of the poet.
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Jerusalem (Image copyright Mikhail Levit, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Little direct commentary on ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ exists, but there is more on HaNagid’s corpus of poetry. One of the earliest comments is from Moshe Ibn Ezra, a poet who lived in Grenada, Spain, and was one year old when HaNagid died. About HaNagid, he writes: ‘‘His poems . . . are various and full of color, powerful in their contents, fine in their form, original in their ideas, and clear in their rhetoric. All that pertains to his compositions and works and letters is known to the uttermost edges of east and west and across the land and sea’’ (quoted by Peter Cole in Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid). Early in the twentieth century, The Jewish Encyclopedia is less kind: ‘‘Samuel’s poetic compositions are distinguished for their elevation of thought; but they are devoid of elegance of form. It became proverbial to say: ‘Cold as the snow of Hermon, or as the songs of the Levite Samuel’.’’ (Levite refers to one of the biblical tribes of Israel; the Levites were regarded as teachers and rabbis.)
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Modern critics have in a sense rediscovered HaNagid. Two lines of thought about the poet and his work can be found. One focuses on the aesthetics of his poetry. Cole, the leading translator of his poems, says approvingly in Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid: ‘‘HaNagid was able to fuse Hebrew and Arabic, given and personal, lyric and epic dimensions in what we now think of as his signature manner. Throughout the three books his poetry presents a compelling forward thrust and relative simplicity of diction, yoked by artifice to complexity of texture and thought.’’ Similarly, Raymond P. Scheindlin, in Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life, sorts HaNagid’s poems (and the poems of other medieval writers in Hebrew) according to their thematic content and concludes that HaNagid ‘‘set the standard’’ in incorporating elements of Islamic art in their poetry. He notes that HaNagid wrote ‘‘gnomic’’ poetry, meaning poetry that has the characteristics of maxims or aphorisms, and he refers to HaNagid as a ‘‘great’’ poet of the Golden Age of medieval Spain. The other strain of modern criticism focuses more on the interconnectedness of HaNagid’s
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poetry with his life. A good example of this type of biographical criticism can be found in Ross Brann’s The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain. Brann notes that ‘‘upon a first reading, the Nagid’s verse sparkles with all the audacity and temerity we might expect of a Dionysian, no trivial accomplishment for a rabbi of the eleventh century!’’ (‘‘Dionysian’’ refers to the ancient Greek god Dionysius and is used to suggest a frenzied or abandoned quality, as opposed to calmness.) He goes on to note, though, that ‘‘the Nagid was a man possessed of inflated designs and driven by a grand vision of himself. At times, he seems obsessed by his own unique career as a man of letters, politician, and Jewish communal leader.’’ In praising the poems, Brann says: ‘‘The Nagid’s Arabic-style Hebrew verse, despite its diction, allusions, . . . and the names of its collections is not a revivified corpus of Temple hymns, but an innovation, both in form and in content, of a new school of Hebrew poets.’’
CRITICISM Michael J. O’Neal O’Neal holds a Ph.D. in English literature. In the following essay, he examines Shmuel HaNagid’s ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ as part of a tradition of Hebrew biblical poetry. The version of ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ reproduced here is a modern English translation of a poem written by a Spaniard in Hebrew a millennium ago. Any translator of such a poem has to make a number of decisions and compromises in making it accessible to a modern reader while retaining essential qualities of the original. One alternative is to attempt a literal, phrase-by-phrase, line-byline translation. This alternative rarely works, for the English version is likely to sound awkward and forced. Further, the grammars and sound systems of English and Hebrew are different, making a unit of language that sounds perfectly normal in one sound awkward in the other. In translating poetry, the translator can try to maintain the rhythm of the original, but doing so requires taking considerable liberties with the original language. Or the translator can try to maintain the tone of the original, which again requires compromises with language and meter along the way. Or the translator can focus on the imagery of the original, but doing so might entail
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ignoring rhythm. Any translation, then, is a series of compromises, but the translation of poetry is far more problematic than that of prose because of the more rigorously formal nature of poetry. A translator of HaNagid’s poems—as well as the translator of those of most of his contemporaries—can rely on one element of the poems to serve as a kind of glue, or as a set of girders that support the poems. Any reader of HaNagid’s ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ who is versed in the Old Testament would readily recognize the links between the poem and the poetry of various biblical books. Some two thirds of the Old Testament is written in verse rather than prose. Some of these books, such as Psalms and Proverbs, are recognizably in verse and are studied today as examples of biblical literature; in this regard, the most recognizably literary book of the Old Testament is the Song of Solomon, which consists entirely of lyric poetry. Other books, though, that are not thought of as ‘‘poetry’’ were in fact written in a poetic style. Genesis is usually translated and printed as prose, but in fact in its original form, it is far more poetic than is usually thought. It was customary—indeed, almost obligatory—for a medieval poet writing in Hebrew to draw on the language and style of the Old Testament. A Jewish philosopher, poet, and scholar like HaNagid saw his life and circumstances as part of an unbroken chain of events in Jewish history, a chain that reached back to the historical events recorded in Genesis and Exodus and that extended through the present on into a future. This chain of events represented the working out of the Jewish nation’s covenant with God as God’s chosen people. Accordingly, a poem such as ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ would in effect be regarded as an extension of and gloss on the truths of the Old Testament, made manifest in HaNagid’s life in medieval Spain. So far, the emphasis has been on the Hebrew Bible. HaNagid, though, lived in a Muslim community and was fluent in Arabic. He studied the Quran, the scripture of Islam, and he was surrounded by a ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Arabic and Islamic art, including not only architecture and ornamentation but poetry as well. Like the Hebrew poets, Arabic poets linked their poetry to the Quran, using its metrics and vocabulary as the raw materials out of which they shaped their poetry. (It should be noted, however, that Islam is divided on the question of whether the Prophet Muhammad allowed poetry; some passages of
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? Another medieval Jewish poet was Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092–1167). His poems ‘‘I Have a Garment’’ and ‘‘My Stars’’ both deal with observations of the heavenly bodies. These and other poems can be found in Twilight of a Golden Age: Selected Poems of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1997), translated by Leon J. Weinberger.
Readers interested in the state of astronomical knowledge in medieval Spain can consult Julio Samso´’s Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain (1994).
‘‘On an Eclipse of the Moon’’ (1846), a brief lyric poem by British writer Walter Savage Landor takes a very different view of the phenomenon of a lunar eclipse.
Readers interested in Hebrew poetry from a range of authors in medieval Spain can find a collection in The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492 (2007), translated by Peter Cole.
Readers interested in more modern Hebrew poetry might turn to the nineteenth-century work of Hayim (often spelled Chaim) Nahman Bialik in Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of Hayim Nahman Bialik (2000), translated by Atar Hadari. Bialik is regarded by many as one of the most important Hebrew poets and one of a handful of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jews who resurrected the Hebrew language.
‘‘Peace on Earth’’ (1913) by American poet William Carlos Williams is a brief lyric poem that references Orion, the Bear, and other constellations of stars. Readers interested in poetry about astronomical phenomena can find a wide-ranging collection of such poems by writers from all eras and cultures at ‘‘Nox Oculis: Astronomical Poetry,’’ at http://pages.infinit.net/ noxoculi/poetry.html.
For information about the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties of medieval Islam, a good starting point is chapter 5 in Michael J. O’Neal’s The Crusades: Almanac (2005).
the Quran are critical of poets, others seem to admire poets and poetry. Many Muslims reject categorically any notion that the Quran is poetic, but it does not follow that others do not find poetic elements in the Quran.) One of the techniques of Islamic poetry is the use of Quranic language as a kind of inlay, similar to mosaics. Islamic architecture and ornamentation did not allow for the representation of living things, especially humans, so it focused instead on color and bravura geometrical effects. This aesthetic was transferred to poetry by the use of language from the Quran that was ‘‘inlaid’’ into Arabic
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Marge Piercy is a Jewish poet who writes poetry suitable for young adults, including The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (1999). To read other examples of HaNagid’s poetry relating to God and nature, try ‘‘The Earthquake’’ and ‘‘The Miracle at Sea,’’ both in Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, translated by Peter Cole (1996).
poetry. HaNagid would have been familiar with much of this poetry, which reinforced a similar aesthetic in Hebrew poetry. Hebrew authors used the word shibbuts to refer to this technique, in which biblical language is ‘‘inlaid’’ into poems. This connection with the Old Testament can be found at nearly every turn. In line 2, for example, the speaker urges his friend to awaken from sleep and to awaken the dawn. The line virtually quotes Psalm 57:8, ‘‘I will awake the dawn!’’ The poet’s comparison of the sky to a leopard skin echoes Jeremiah 13:23, where the writer asks whether a leopard can change his
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spots. The suggestion in the poem that the earth is reddened as though tears are flowing echoes Job 16:16: ‘‘My face is red with weeping.’’ When the poet says that God has covered the moon with a circle of earth, he echoes Isaiah 40:22: ‘‘It is he who sits above the circle of the earth.’’ When the poet compares the face of the moon to a face that is wounded and bruised, the line is inspired by Isaiah 1:6: ‘‘From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds.’’ The poet’s odd image of the moth eating the Bear and Orion was likely inspired by Isaiah 50:9: ‘‘Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.’’ This image is continued in Isaiah 51:8: ‘‘For the moth will eat them up like a garment.’’ Numerous other instances of these kinds of biblical echoes can be found from other Old Testament books: the Song of Solomon, Jeremiah, Chronicles, Samuel, Zechariah, Daniel, Joel, Malachi, Deuteronomy, Nehemiah, Joshua, Samuel, and Judges. These echoes continue to the end of the poem, when the poet envisions that God will allay his fear on Judgment Day, reflecting Isaiah 7:3–4: ‘‘And the Lord said to Isaiah, ‘Go forth to meet Ahaz . . . and say to him, ‘Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint.’’’’ At issue is not whether the poet quotes the Bible. Sometimes he did, lifting verses or phrases from the Old Testament and using them almost word for word. Usually, though, the poet who wrote in the biblical tradition used the vocabulary and imagery of the Bible. The Bible became in effect the poet’s lexicon, his dictionary and phrase book. His readers, who likely read and studied the Old Testament and had likely committed large portions of it to memory, would have immediately recognized the biblical language. This language was the structuring principle of HaNagid’s poems, including ‘‘Two Eclipses,’’ and any translator of his poetry would likely work to preserve that biblical language in bringing HaNagid’s work to new generations of readers. Source: Michael O’Neal, Critical Essay on ‘‘Two Eclipses,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Jay Ladin In the following review, Ladin discusses Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid and the challenges of translation.
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THE STRUGGLE TO RECONCILE SENSE WITH SENSIBILITY HAS NO DOUBT CHECKED THE SLEEP OF EVERY TRANSLATOR OF POETRY. BUT MEDIEVAL HEBREW POEMS PRESENT A UNIQUE AND PROBABLY INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE. AS SCHEINDLIN’S LUCID, INSIGHTFUL COMMENTARY MAKES CLEAR, THE COURTIER-RABBIS LIVED PROFOUNDLY HYPHENATED LIVES.’’
News flash: The Vatican has announced that the Pope and other ranking church clergy have begun writing secular poetry in Latin, warping the ancient phrases of Vulgate and Mass into stylish, sophisticated odes to wine, women, and song. . . . Impossible, surely. But at the onset of the last millennium, this is what happened, albeit among rabbis rather than cardinals, in Hebrew rather than Latin, and in Muslim-controlled Andalusia—then the cultural and religious center of the Jewish world—rather than the Holy See. In the midtenth century, one Dunash ben Labrat brashly set the Hebrew tongue, for centuries reserved for prayer and sacred study, to the quantitative meters and distinctly secular themes of classical Arabic verse, then the sine qua non of literature. Dunash touched off a literary wildfire that blazed several hundred years and became known, in retrospect, as the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry. The cream of the Jewish community—courtier-rabbis who shuttled between Muslim palaces and Jewish yeshivas—started writing poems about brimming crystal goblets, the luscious girls and boys who filled them, and a host of other distinctly nonspiritual subjects that hadn’t been hymned in Hebrew since before the fall of Rome: . . . Bring me wine from a cup held by a girl, who excels on the lute; a mature vintage, made by Adam, or new, from Noah’s fields. Its hue like living coral and gold, its bouquet like calamus and myrrh—
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like David’s wine that queens prepared, impeccably, or graceful harems . . . (from ‘‘Your Years are Sleep’’) These lines by Shmuel HaNagid, considered the first great Golden Age poet and one of the greatest Hebrew poets of any era, echo the Biblical books of Genesis, Samuel, Ezekiel, Psalms, and, faintly, Job, all in the course of rifting on one of the wine-song themes of Arabic meistersinger Abu Nuwas. The tongue is the tongue of the Torah, but the images are pure pleasure-palace. Medieval Hebrew poetry steered a course between piety and blasphemy that probably cannot be mapped on modern charts—imagine, if you can, a Papal sonnet starting ‘‘Hail Marian full of grapes,’’ and the Catholic world treating it not as a case of demonic possession, but as a glorification of their holy tongue. The Arabic poets whom the Golden Agers adopted as models made a great point of demonstrating, through virtuousic versifying, the purity and potency of the language of the Koran. The courtier-rabbis, with the over-achieving minority’s chauvinistic pride, were determined to trump their Muslim counterparts and prove the Torah’s Hebrew a poetic medium as fit or fitter than scriptural Arabic. If only contemporary Arab-Jewish conflicts could be so bloodlessly and ravishingly resolved. As we dip our toes into our own new millennium, it is fitting that interest among Englishspeaking readers in this poetic treasure-trove from the last seems to be growing, to judge by the recent publication of Peter Cole’s Selected Poems of Samuel HaNagid, and the upcoming appearance of a new translation of HaNagid’s sometime protege and fellow Golden Age luminary, Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Medieval Hebrew poetry is what we would now call a triumph of multiculturalism. Admitted to and tolerated (if not welcomed) in the upper echelons of Muslim society, ambitious Andalusian Jews steeped themselves in Arabic language, literature, philosophy, and science. But rather than assimilating, the Jews of the Golden Age—and this is what made it a Golden Age—took the siren song of non-Jewish culture as a wake-up call. The result was a renaissance that included unparalleled achievements in philosophy, philology, and, of course, literature, as Hebrew leapt the margins of prayerbooks and scrolls and reentered the alleys, palaces, and boudoirs beyond them. The variety and vividness of this verse may startle those who think of learned, devout Jews
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as pallid, angst-ridden yeshiva bochers bowed, like the soul of Cynthia Ozick’s hapless ‘‘Pagan Rabbi,’’ beneath towers of musty tomes. Shmuel HaNagid, for example, chronicles earthquakes, conjures up scent-soaked gardens, gloats over fallen rivals, seduces coquettish serving boys and girls, cossets and lectures his son Yehosef, and strolls among slaughtered livestock: I crossed through a souk where the butchers hung oxen and sheep at their sides, there were birds and herds of fatlings like squid, their terror loud as blood congealed over blood and slaughterers’ knives opened veins. In booths alongside them the fishmongers, and fish in heaps, and tackle like sand . . . (from ‘‘The Market’’) HaNagid’s poems have an earthiness without equivalent in the liturgical Hebrew verse that flourished before, during, and after the secular Golden Age. But despite the strikingly observed images, medieval Hebrew verse was courtiers’ poetry, bred (and inbred) in the hothouses of luxury, sophistication, and intrigue that were the Andalusian Muslim courts. Written by and for a small elite of men who had received identical educations, attended the same parties, read the same books, were subject to the same social pressures, and subscribed to the same values, this poetry, like that of the Elizabethan courtiers, is largely a matter of convention and wit, brimming with highly wrought phrases, ingeniously deployed cliches, oblique allusions, and formal tours de force. Even the brutal realism of HaNagid’s market scene is a play on Ecclesiastes, and its grim meditation on death (‘‘And my heart . . . asked: / Who are you to survive? What separates you from these beasts?’’) an occasion for spectacular artifice. As in many medieval Hebrew and Arabic poems, each line shares the same rhyme-syllable, in this case ‘‘dam,’’ Hebrew for ‘‘blood’’; mortality, as represented by its most vivid metonym, tolls at the terminus of every line. Medieval Hebrew poetry was a performance art, and showmanship was as important to Golden Age poets as it is to contemporary slam competitors. In the Andalusian Muslim courts, poetry was simultaneously a revered art form, a popular pastime, and a means of climbing the social ladder. Bravura displays of poetizing had the same effect on reputation as sharpshooting feats in Hollywood Westerns. Improvisational
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contests were common, and, if the stories are true, men could rise from obscurity to power by spontaneously composing poems that met seemingly insuperable thematic and formal challenges. The poetry that flourished under these conditions looks rather repetitive when judged by contemporary standards. Golden Age poems are composed largely of stock phrases, stock sentiments, stock characters, and stock images. Much of their brilliance, originality, and resonance are lost on those unversed in the arcana of classical Arabic poetics and sacred Hebrew texts. Hebrew readers can, at least, appreciate the word-play of these poems without being medievalists. English versions cannot even hint at the sonic and semantic splendor of the originals. Imagine a prose crib of Gerard Manley Hopkins, or a Shakespeare sonnet stripped of puns, rhymes, and iambs, and you get the idea. And yet, translators cannot afford simply to throw in the musical towel, as Leon J. Weinberger’s Jewish Prince in Moslem Spain, an early 1970s attempt to make Shmuel HaNagid’s verse accessible to English readers, demonstrates in page after wooden page: My God, pray change the heart of the young dove who stole My sleep that he may give back but a little of it to my eyelids. My beloved, who came with solemn oath and gave to me His heart’s love as a gift, without compulsion, Has betrayed me. But then all young lovers are unfaithful. And so do forgive him his sins, or failing that, punish me instead. (‘‘All Young Lovers’’) Like the other ninety-four in the collection, this translation is lexically faithful yet poetically DOA. Golden Age poems, like jazz, the twentieth century’s most spectacular example of highly conventionalized improvisational art, don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got at least a bit of that swing. Raymond Scheindlin’s rendering in Wine, Women and Death, his introduction to what he calls Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life sacrifices accuracy in a bid to suggest the scintillating word-play of the original: Change, my God, the heart of that chick that checked My sleep, and make him give it back to me;
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A fawn who swore by Your name to give His love to me, a gift of his own free will, And then betrayed me; lovers all betray. Forgive his sin—or wipe me out, I pray. Both the virtues and drawbacks of Scheindlin’s approach to translation are apparent in the first two lines. Far livelier than Weinberger’s ‘‘the young dove who stole,’’ the phrase ‘‘that chick that checked’’ aptly renders the rhythmic bounce and vocalic play of HaNagid’s punning phrase, ‘‘gozal asher gazal.’’ But Scheindlin pays a poetic price for substituting ‘‘chick’’ for ‘‘dove.’’ Chicks rank distinctly lower than doves in the pecking order of ornithological imagery, and ‘‘chick,’’ thanks to its previous career as Sixties slang, comes perilously close to making the poem sound like the prayer of an aging, insomniac hippie. Worse problems arise from the jazzy but inaccurate switch from ‘‘stole’’ to ‘‘checked.’’ ‘‘Stolen’’ sleep can presumably be ‘‘returned,’’ as the speaker demands in the original; since ‘‘checked’’ sleep, whatever that is, cannot, the word blurs the poems sophisticated play on the notion of romantic give-and-take. The struggle to reconcile sense with sensibility has no doubt checked the sleep of every translator of poetry. But medieval Hebrew poems present a unique and probably insurmountable obstacle. As Scheindlin’s lucid, insightful commentary makes clear, the courtier-rabbis lived profoundly hyphenated lives. For these poets and their contemporary readers, Hebrew was the language through which they praised, petitioned, and strove to penetrate the will of God—and it was emphatically not the language in which they transacted business, flattered their Muslim rulers, argued with their wives, or muttered to themselves when they woke in the middle of the night. No English can convey what the secular use of Hebrew meant to Golden Age poets. The ironies inherent in yoking together Jewish and Muslim worlds are implicit in every Hebrew syllable they fitted, with courtiers’ self-conscious flourishes, to Arabic literary conventions—and they become startlingly explicit, when sacred phrases are transposed into profane songs. Of course, when your lexicon is the Bible, every word is a reference and a quotation; the most straightforward request for illumination can easily come out as ‘‘Let there be light.’’ But in many poems, these secular shocks are as crucial as plays on the language of love are to
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Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the poem quoted above, for example, HaNagid turns direct address to God—the rhetorical mode is that of the most intimate prayer—into the vehicle for a witty, homoerotic complaint. In English, the poem hovers uneasily between blasphemy and bathos. In Hebrew, the word-play fuses the two into a self-lacerating critique of the courtierrabbi’s love affair with secular Muslim culture. The hinge is the line Scheindlin renders as ‘‘lovers all betray.’’ ‘‘Lovers’’ in the Hebrew is tzvi, which literally means ‘‘gazelle,’’ but which, in medieval Hebrew poetry, is the stock phrase used for the comely young boys hired to serve and flirt at the wine parties that Golden Age poets, Muslim and Jewish, frequented and frequently wrote about. HaNagid draws attention to this word by making a point of avoiding it in the first line, substituting and playing on the idiosyncratic ‘‘ghozal’’ instead. ‘‘Tzvi’’ also means ‘‘ornament,’’ ‘‘beauty,’’ or ‘‘glory,’’ a multiple entendre which unites the poet and his loveobject as betrayers—the poet betrayed by the tzvi (young lover) is himself a betrayer, in using the sacred tongue for the sake of tzvi (poetic ornament, secular beauty, personal glory). The last line, which mimics Moses’ plea to God to forgive the Israelites for making the Golden Calf (‘‘Now, if You will, forgive their sin—if not, erase me from the Book you have written!’’), trumpets the identification between poet and tzvi—in both senses of the word. The Israelites’ sin was fashioning and worshipping a figure that conformed to forbidden, non-Jewish conventions; part of their penance was ‘‘stripping themselves of their finery.’’ Read with this resonance in the ear—and it cannot be, in English, for annotation of a reference does not produce the same frisson as does instantaneously recognized quotation—the poem is at least as much about the moral and spiritual complexities of writing secular Hebrew poetry as about love. The final outburst—‘‘Forgive his sin—or wipe me out, I pray’’—is simultaneously guilt-ridden and sardonic, self-humbling and unmitigatedly chutzapadik. Whether or not the sin of tzvi was forgiven, HaNagid and his fellow secular Hebrew poets clearly chose to risk being blotted out of God’s Book rather than renounce their own. Shmuel HaNagid’s poems account for an extraordinary amount of the gilt of the Golden Age. Generally acclaimed as one of medieval
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Hebrew poetry’s four greatest poets—the others are Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Judah HaLevi, and Moses Ibn Ezra—HaNagid pioneered many of what became its standard practices, and audaciously experimented with unusual meters and modes. A poet with the technical command and influence of Auden at the height of his powers, he was also a field general roughly as renowned as Patton, the local Muslim ruler’s chief of staff and confidant, a famous Talmudic authority, and undisputed head of the Andalusian Jewish community. In his own eyes, and in the cultural pantheon of the Golden Age, HaNagid—a title that means ‘‘leader’’—was a latter-day King David, a warrior-poet-priest-prince who personified the glory of the Jewish people. Before the publication of Peter Cole’s translations, HaNagid was hard to find in English. Weinberger’s 1973 translation is a good sampling of HaNagid’s oeuvre, and, with its facing Hebrew texts, is invaluable for the English-speaking reader who has enough Hebrew to get by with help from a literal trot. And Scheindlin’s midEighties bilingual anthology includes a number of HaNagid’s poems. But Scheindlin’s stated goal is to introduce readers to the typical features of medieval Hebrew poetry, not to spotlight its most distinctive achievements; his translations are instructive exempla, not poems in their own right. Cole’s collection is the first to translate a broad swath of HaNagid’s work into a modern poetic idiom. Cole has attempted, as he puts it, to ‘‘conduct the poet’s quality of emotion and movement of mind. When the voice in the Hebrew is ambitious or subtle or aggrieved, or where the verse is particularly musical, inventive, or sublime, I try for a similar sense of the English. . . . ’’ Cole’s attentiveness to HaNagid’s voice shows. One of the strengths of his anthology is the abundance of passages in which HaNagid’s varied tones snap and swagger across the centuries. We hear his tough-minded realism (‘‘They bake, they eat, they lead their prey; / they split what’s left to bring home’’ [‘‘The Market’’]), intellectually nuanced faith (‘‘God restores what He levels / though He keeps His secrets and erases His ways’’ [‘‘The Miracle at Sea’’]), snide superiority (‘‘One needs, it seems, only fringes, a turban, and beard / to head the Academy now’’ [‘‘House of Prayer’’]), rabbinic wisdom (‘‘It’s heart that discerns / between evil and good, / so work to develop your heart’’ [‘‘It’s Heart That Discerns’’]), courtier’s cynicism (‘‘The king’s fickleness /
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resembles the drunk’s’’ [‘‘The King’’]), unblinking contemplation of his own mortality (‘‘Heart says: you’ll live forever— / and death as it speaks / grasps you with claws’’ [‘‘Soul Opens Inside You’’]), chest-thumping pride (‘‘No good could come of one / who exalts himself over my family, / no peace to him who threatens my city’’ [‘‘The War with Yadir’’]), and unassuagable grief (‘‘By the life of the Living / God, for the world / he’ll be in my blood / like fire, / until I’m dust / in the dust at his side’’ [‘‘On the Death of His Brother Isaac’’]). Cole makes a point of arranging his selection along the lines of HaNagid’s original collections. He even includes the peculiar prefaces written by HaNagid’s chief scribe, his son Yehosef, who notes for posterity that ‘‘I wrote these out in my own hand when I was eight and a half years old, it being that my birth, according to my father’s precise records, may God sustain him for me, took place at three hours and four fifths of an hour exactly, on the night of the third day of the week. . . . ’’ Such astrological particulars don’t tell us much about HaNagid, but the structure of the diwan (as Golden Age oeuvres are known) does. The titles of HaNagid’s three collections—Ben Tehillim (‘‘After [literally, ‘‘Son of’’] Psalms’’), Ben Mishle (‘‘After Proverbs’’), and Ben Kohelet (‘‘After Ecclesiastes’’)—frame his distinctly worldly poems as offspring of the Biblical Hebrew canon. This seemingly defensive maneuver audaciously transforms holy writ into literary precedent. The title Ben Tehillim, for example, points up the fact that, like HaNagid’s collection, the Book of Psalms is an eclectic anthology which ranges from the intimately personal to the die-stamped formulaic, from vivid narratives to brief lyrics, from ecstatic boasts to heartbroken confessions. It also underlines the parallel between HaNagid and David, the poet whose personality and lyric prowess dominate the Book of Psalms, and whose trademark poetic move is to present his secular endeavors as sacred dramas—a canny, tacit justification for HaNagid’s own poetic undertaking. Ben Tehillim was a groundbreaking book: HaNagid’s drinking poems, love poems, boasts, friendship poems, and so on consolidated many of medieval Hebrew poetry’s basic genres. It also contains some of the Golden Age’s most unique works. HaNagid experimented with epic storytelling, represented in Cole’s selection by ‘‘The
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Miracle at Sea,’’ a yarn (though some scholars think it is intended as a factual account) of HaNagid’s deliverance from a sea-monster, ‘‘its head huge as a galley with oars, / its face haughty, like a hill, / its eyes like pools. . . . ’’ He tracked what we would now call the stages of grief in an intimate, ‘‘In Memoriam’’-like sequence of elegies (excerpted and rearranged by Cole), charting his responses to the illness and death of his brother Isaac. And he resurrected Hebrew war poetry in pieces like ‘‘The War with Yadir,’’ a pugnacious, consciously Davidic melange of religious self-justification (‘‘I trust in the Lord who humbled my foes’’), strategic play-by-play (‘‘Two of the Spanish princes were there, / and the Zemarite troops, and they seized the city’’), editorial (‘‘He was a foe in the line of my king— / and the evil of strangers pales / beside the evil of kin’’), and metaphoric filigree (‘‘We slew them two against three, / like long vowels against short in a word’’). Ben Mishle is, as the title suggests, a collection of proverbs, many of them rephrasings of chestnuts from Arabic and Hebrew wisdom literature. Where the Biblical Book of Proverbs is presented as paternal advice, HaNagid’s is what we would now call mentoring. As befits the most successful Jewish courtier since Joseph, he sardonically spotlights for his junior colleagues the discrepancies between public and private, deed and thought, appearance and reality, which no ambitious Golden Age Jew could afford to ignore: The rich are small in number, and the brilliant likewise are few; and the number of each is further reduced when they step side by side into view. HaNagid’s last, and possibly posthumous, collection, Ben Kohelet, though not as dazzlingly variegated as Ben Tehillim, is much more diverse than Ben Mishle. In addition to proverbs, it includes narratives, descriptions of eclipses and earthquakes, and, as one would expect from the title, down-in-the-mouth meditations on death. Ecclesiastes was an ideal model for the aging HaNagid: The Biblical Kohelet rambles between proverb, rant, carpe diem-style injunctions, and bitter boasts of evanescent triumphs. HaNagid, too, had seen the glorious come and go: You whose souls on earth were exalted, will soon rise over all— and be remembered in the world ever after as a dream when it fades is recalled. (from ‘‘Know of the Limbs’’)
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Cole writes that he ‘‘tried to account for my understanding of the poet’s distinctive combination of pathos and wit, his integration of artifice and the steady pressure of the personal in his lines.’’ Not surprisingly, Cole is more successful at translating HaNagid’s ‘‘pathos’’ than his ‘‘wit.’’ Existential despair travels remarkably well across languages and centuries: Earth to man is a prison forever. These tidbits, then, for fools: Run where you will. Heaven surrounds you Get out if you can. HaNagid’s ‘‘wit’’ and ‘‘artifice,’’ however, are much more culture-bound, a matter of conventions nearly a millennium out of date. Cole comes closest to ‘‘accounting’’ for both in HaNagid’s most personal epigrams, like those above, whose wit is built into their concision, and whose artifice is readily denoted by a hint of meter and a bit of rhyme. Second-best are those that yoke proverbial injunction to chiseled images, and that attest to the ironic, unblinking intelligence behind the generalities: Delay your speech if you want your words to be straight and free of deceit— as a master archer is slow to take aim while splitting a grain of wheat. But there was no Golden Age Ezra Pound to instill fear of generalities into medieval Hebrew poets. Many of HaNagid’s bons mots sound, to contemporary ears, too much like Polonius and too little like Hamlet. It is hardly Cole’s fault that he cannot breathe poetic life into such homilies as ‘‘If you’re finding the good at fault, / you’re in the dark all alone; / if you can’t see the kindness of others, / there isn’t much hope for your own.’’ The biggest problem with Cole’s translation, however, is that in poems more than a few lines long—that is, in much of this book—he has not found ways to bridge medieval Hebrew and contemporary English poetics. Cole nods toward HaNagid’s formal intricacies with sound- and word-play when he can, but his primary means of effecting what he calls ‘‘sustaining poetic reality’’ is enjambment: Your years are sleep, their fortune’s wheel a dream;
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best, my friend, to shut your eyes and ears—God grant you strength— and leave the hidden things around youto one who’s good with clues. Bring me wine from a cup held by a girl, who excels on the lute . . . (from ‘‘Your Years are Sleep’’) Here and throughout this book, Cole relentlessly breaks, indents, and otherwise chops up HaNagid’s lines in ways which are alarmingly at odds with the flow of the original poems, gambling that abrupt linebreaks can transform leaden medievalisms into edgy, personal-sounding utterances with the feel of living poetry. The gamble only occasionally pays off. Here, for example, the first line’s accusatory tone grabs the reader by the collar. By the second line, though, this grip is already slackening: ‘‘their fortune’s wheel a dream’’ is too abstract to sustain the first line’s urgency. ‘‘Best, my friend,’’ makes another stab at directness, but Cole blunts the effect by breaking the line after ‘‘your,’’ a disorienting, Williamsesque move that he repeats in the next line, presumably to defamiliarize the pious interjection ‘‘God grant you strength.’’ The constant enjambments shatter the sentence into brief, intrinsically meaningless phrases whose syntactical and logical ligaments can barely be discerned. The return to clear, direct address in the second stanza (Cole’s innovation— the original is not thus divided) is refreshing but inexplicable, a momentarily welcome but ultimately confusing shift that adds to the sense that the poem is a string of gnomic non sequiturs. It is easier to appreciate what Cole is doing—and failing to do—by comparing his rendition to Weinberger’s literal version: My friend, all your years are sleep Both good and bad are dreams. Therefore shut your eyes and ears (May the Lord give you strength!) And leave the hidden things In your world to those who understand them. Rather, give me a cup of old wine to drink From the hand of a young maid skilled on the ’alamot. Cole knows what Williams knew: that syntaxdefying line-breaks can turn the simplest statements into series of enigmatic fragments. But
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the complexities that Cole’s layout introduce have nothing to do with HaNagid’s gorgeous weave of sound and sense, and completely eclipse the already obscure conventions with which HaNagid is playing. As Scheindlin notes in his commentary, ‘‘The opening sententious reflection . . . [is] a parody of pietistic verse . . . [that] is really advising the listener to censor bothersome reflections . . . If life is nothing but sleep, then sleep! Leave the thinking to God, and drink up.’’ What was, to HaNagid, a mock-sermon admonishing drinkers to drink more seriously becomes, in Cole’s enjambing hands, a mordant cryptogram. Such long-dead conventions as the wineparty poem certainly require some sort of poetic resuscitation for contemporary readers, but Cole’s enjambment strategy is self-defeating: It renders individual lines intriguingly obscure, but prevents them from coalescing into structure, sense and, since HaNagid was not writing postmodernist pastiche, poetry. . . . In some poems, Cole’s search for le mot juste leads him to lexical choices which, while not exactly wrong, draw too much attention to themselves for the good of the poem. The word ‘‘contortions,’’ for example, seems a bit extravagant in the midst of a conventional rhetorical question like ‘‘How could a person sin when he sees / the contortions of each man’s journey?’’ (‘‘The Earthquake’’). And what epigram could survive the wedging of the word ‘‘vitae’’ into this crucial slot: ‘‘Ask the dead and they’ll tell you: Come / look at your vitae’s secret and sins’’ (‘‘Ask the Dead and They’ll Tell You’’)? The Talmud quotes a certain Rabbi Tarfon as saying, ‘‘Do not shy from the unattainable.’’ Cole certainly has not. His versions of HaNagid may well be definitive in the sense of proving that, pending some improbable change in the way we read and write poetry, you can’t get here from there. But we are indebted to Cole for reminding us of the days when poems were the very coin of social capital, when poets were princes, warriors, and sages who knew all there was to know about living and dying, and weren’t afraid to proclaim it: And they said: Who are you . . . And I answered . . . my songs surpass even those of the Levites, even those of the close-cropped priests. Coffers of gold are within my dominion, and chests of the finest clothes. In my presence the experts go dumb,
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and scholars as though they were guilty . . . They stand there in silence before me— even the movers and shakers; I reveal to them marvelous things, of hidden interests, ‘‘obscure’’—and fashion my difficult rhymes, which know no peer in creation. (from ‘‘How I Helped the Wise’’) Source: Jay Ladin, ‘‘The Prince and the Paupered: Medieval Hebrew Poetry Meets the Twenty-First Century,’’ in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Vol. 25, Nos. 1–2, 2001, pp. 109–24.
Robert Alter In the following review, Alter examines the translation problems associated with Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, in which ‘‘Two Eclipses’’ appears. The life of Shmuel HaNagid, a figure scarcely known outside Hebraist circles, would make an extraordinary story even if he were not one of the great European poets of the medieval period. Born in Cordoba in 993, he fled to Malaga at the age of 20, when his native city fell to the Berbers. Like many economically privileged Jewish males in Andalusia in this era, he had been given a double education: in Bible and Talmud (among many other projects, he would publish a work of authoritative erudition on talmudic law), and in philosophy, the natural sciences and Arabic literature. He appears to have been successfully involved in commerce early on; and within a few years the kingdom of Granada, which controlled Malaga, appointed him tax-collector and then governor or regent (the meaning of the Hebrew term nagid) of the Jewish community of Granada. In 1037, apparently because he had the wit to back the right claimant to the throne in a succession struggle, he was elevated to vizier of Granada and commander-in-chief of its army. The majority of the Granadan population, it should be said, was probably Jewish, and the ruling elite, which was Berber, may well have felt it could trust a Jew in this high office more than an indigenous Arab. Beginning in 1038, HaNagid went out on military campaigns at the head of the Granadan army and recorded his experience in the first battle poems written in Hebrew since biblical times. He continued these expeditions, together with all his other political
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FOR ALL THE FLAWS OF HIS RENDERINGS, HOWEVER, PETER COLE HAS PERFORMED A REAL SERVICE TO ENGLISH READERS IN MAKING THIS GENEROUS SELECTION OF HANAGID’S POEMS AVAILABLE, AND AT LEAST SOME OF THE TIME PRODUCING ENGLISH VERSIONS THAT SUGGEST THE BEAUTY, THE WIT AND THE VITALITY OF THE HEBREW.’’
and cultural activities, until shortly before his death in 1056. HaNagid came of age just a few decades after a momentous innovation in the cultural life of Andalusian Jewry: the adaptation to Hebrew of the norms and the conventions of Arabic poetry. Formally, this meant composing verse in Hebrew in an intricate system of strict quantitative meters with an elaborate deployment of often hyperbolic imagery (in many ways analogous to the ‘‘conceited style’’ of Renaissance English sonnets). Substantively, since the new Hebrew poets embraced virtually all the Arabic genres, this meant that secular poetry was being written in Hebrew for the first time in well over 1,000 years—erotic verse, drinking poems, philosophical reflections, intimate epistolary verse, poetic riddles, satires, panegyrics, nature poetry and confessional or autobiographical poems. When Shmuel HaNagid began to write poetry, probably around 1013 or somewhat before that pivotal date in his life, the new literary movement had developed a good deal of momentum in the Andalusian Jewish social elite. In an odd coincidence of destiny and talent, however, this man who would achieve such a remarkable political career also turned out to be the first true master of medieval Hebrew poetry. He would be followed by three others whose greatness is undisputed: his younger contemporary Shlomo ibn Gabirol and, two generations later, Moshe ibn Ezra and Yehuda HaLevi. The poetic movement he helped to shape would continue to flourish for another
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seven centuries, spreading to a number of Mediterranean countries, reaching as far as Yemen and showing the greatest vigor in Italy, where it was introduced by the itinerant Avraham ibn Ezra (Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra) in the twelfth century. Although readers of Hebrew never entirely forgot the great Spanish-Hebrew poets, this large body of vibrant, sensuously rich verse has really been rediscovered in our century. Treasure-troves of manuscripts have been unearthed (we now possess eight times the number of authentic poems by HaNagid than were known before 1934); scholarly editions of the major poets have been established; scrupulous historical and philological investigations have been undertaken. Especially worthy of mention is the illuminating work of the late Dan Pagis (himself a fine Hebrew poet), which did much to clarify the formal conventions and the distinctive aesthetics of the medieval tradition. Hebrew readers now have the poems available in a new abundance, with greatly enhanced textual reliability, and they also have the critical tools to read the poems in clear focus, with heightened appreciation. Conveying this poetry in any language but Hebrew is quite another matter. There are four significant aspects of the medieval poems that create nearly insuperable difficulties for the English translator: the elegance of the complex quantitative meters, for which there is scarcely any English equivalent; the concomitant concision of idiomatic usage and the compression of syntax the poets adopted to suit the meters; the predominant use of monorhymes, to which Hebrew and Arabic lend themselves, but which are unfeasible in an English poem that is much longer than a couplet; and the pervasive deployment of biblical locutions, sometimes with the most complex evocation of the original biblical contexts for a readership that would have been familiar with the entire Hebrew Bible almost verbatim. Rendering in English a poem by HaNagid or ibn Gabirol is a little like trying to translate Pope’s heroic couplets into a language that has no notion of rhyme or accentual-syllabic meter for an audience totally ignorant of the Greek and Latin poets that Pope invokes or parodies. This stubborn resistance to translation, in the language and the formal structures of the medieval poems, should be kept in mind in
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assessing Peter Cole’s efforts in this interesting new book. His performance as a translator seems to me extremely uneven, though there are moments of real felicity. It would require astounding virtuosity, which he does not possess, to produce truly satisfying English approximations of these wonderfully poised and eloquent Hebrew poems. Cole has done his homework on the subject with admirable care. His introduction on medieval Hebrew poetry and HaNagid is intelligent, helpful to the general reader and aptly informed by the best modern scholarship. At the back of the book, he provides nearly eighty closely printed pages of notes on the poems to instruct the English reader about their intricate line-byline deployment of biblical—and rabbinic—allusions. His selection of poems is judicious and should give English readers a representative sense of HaNagid’s handling of all the principal poetic genres of the period. Cole’s book also enables one to see how certain personal preoccupations of the poet run across the boundaries of genre and even sometimes reshape genre. Let me give a central instance. HaNagid is a poet who, in the full tide of a spectacularly active life, is spooked by mortality, haunted by visions of the body mouldering in the grave: ‘‘and my tongue which has told of my life / will be in its box / like a stone in the heart of the sea’’. These broodings on death appear in the sort of poems where you would expect them, such as his aphoristic wisdom poems that he called ‘‘After Ecclesiastes,’’ or his stunning cycle on the death of his brother Isaac, or the memorable ubi sunt poem grounded in his military experience, which begins with the following lines: I quartered the troops for the night in a fortress which soldiers destroyed long ago, and they fell asleep at its walls and foundations while beneath us its masters slept on. And I wondered: what had become of the people who dwelled here before us? Where were the builders and soldiers, the wealthy and poor, the slaves and their lords?
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words, ‘‘Your years are sleep, / their fortune’s wheel a dream’’ and then boisterously invokes the immemorial practice of wine-drinking— ‘‘Bring me wine from a cup / held by a girl, / who excels on the lute; / a mature vintage, made by Adam, / or new, from Noah’s fields.’’—and then concludes with an injunction for all good drinkers to ‘‘keep the laws of Kohelet, / fearing death, / and the fury to come.’’ (‘‘Kohelet’’ is the Hebrew name for ‘‘Ecclesiastes.’’) These words are virtually a HaNagid signature: no other poet of the period superimposed tombstone on winecask in this fashion, and in a genre meant to be playful and celebratory. The lines I have quoted from ‘‘I quartered the troops’’ and ‘‘Your years are sleep’’ are representative instances of Cole’s competence as a translator. Their rhythmic integrity and their expressive directness give you some sense of what is going on in the original, even if they lack the virtuosic sound-play and word-play repeatedly manifested in HaNagid’s Hebrew. At times Cole shows real flair, as in these lines, enlivened by alliteration and vivid diction, from the feistily self-assertive poem HaNagid wrote when he left Cordoba: And the friends who fray me, their fine physiques and slender thinking, thinking it’s ease or gain that drives me, pitching from place to place, my hair wild, my eyes charcoaled with night— and not a one speaks wisely, their souls blunted, or blurred, goat-footed thinkers. Cole’s versions can also be quite effective in capturing HaNagid’s descriptive vigor, as in these lines from a poem on an earthquake that shook Granada in 1047: He when He pleases who brings out the sun and lights the hills with fire, ripples the mountains like wind rippling spikes of wheat in a field.
But mortality also proves to be a kind of counterpoint to the generically dictated exuberance in many of HaNagid’s drinking poems. Thus, one of them begins with the somber
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Finally, Cole is often surprisingly good in rendering the sharp bite of HaNagid’s brief aphoristic poems (in the Hebrew, many are mere couplets), sometimes using rhyme, as does the original, to snap shut the structure of emphatic utterance:
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Delay your speech if you want your words to be straight and free of deceit — as a master archer is slow to take aim while splitting a grain of wheat. Unfortunately, Cole’s translations are not consistently this effective. He tends to wobble between taking liberties—usually understandable liberties—with the original and an excessive literalism. The result is an abundance of lines and locutions that don’t quite sound like English, such as this brief sequence from the cycle on the death of the poet’s brother: ‘‘who’d herd as one the heifer and bear, and none devour, / and none make prey,’’ or this reference to the obedience of his troops, ‘‘they’re willingly drawn in my cord,’’ or this praise of God, ‘‘justice shapes your mouth and heart.’’ Cole’s sense of appropriate diction sometimes slips, as when, in an exquisite nature poem, he renders remes (the biblical ‘‘creeping things’’) as ‘‘bugs,’’ or when he translates a reference to the lovely light of the moon as ‘‘glare,’’ and some of the poems are marred by anachronistic terms that would have never occurred to an eleventh-century person: ‘‘You flaunt your phallic soul,’’ ‘‘briefings,’’ ‘‘movers and shakers,’’ ‘‘debunks.’’ The most regrettable lapses in these English versions are when Cole, apparently reaching for a fancy poetic effect, becomes simply unintelligible. In some of these instances, even a look at the Hebrew did not help me see what he was trying to say: ‘‘and the God of sentence / send aegis,’’ ‘‘I act the horizon,’’ ‘‘you’ll move toward peace through my promise,’’ ‘‘smothered their hearts with lids,’’ ‘‘a stone to start trouble.’’ A few of these puzzlers reflect misconstruals of the Hebrew. In a battle poem, HaNagid is made to say of the fearsome enemy, ‘‘In their might . . . the parable makers were richly endowed.’’ This obscures the plain sense of the Hebrew, which is that the makers of parables or bywords of valor would coin their parables in the image of these fierce warriors. Among the other lines just quoted, the enigmatic phrase ‘‘move toward peace through my promise’’ derives from a misreading of the last word of the poem, mavtihi, which has nothing to do with ‘‘promise’’ (as in modern Hebrew) but means instead ‘‘he who makes me safe,’’ that is, God; so the actual sense of the line is ‘‘I trust you will go in peace to my God.’’
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For all the flaws of his renderings, however, Peter Cole has performed a real service to English readers in making this generous selection of HaNagid’s poems available, and at least some of the time producing English versions that suggest the beauty, the wit and the vitality of the Hebrew. I must confess, however, that a sampling of translations by Hillel Halkin in an essay on HaNagid (‘‘The First Post-Ancient Jew,’’ Commentary, September 1993) seems to me consistently superior to Cole’s versions in their control of poetic diction and in a general sense of refined expression. Compare these two treatments of a brief poem that is an elegant variation on the convention which combines the pleasures of drinking with the pleasures of sexual desire. First Cole: I’d give everything I own for that gazelle who, rising at night to his harp and flute, saw a cup in my hand and said: ‘‘Drink your grape blood against my lips!’’ And the moon was cut like a D, on a dark robe, written in gold. This works well enough, and is another illustration of Cole’s clear competence, though the idiomatic usage is a shade off in the line about drinking the blood of the grape, and the ‘‘D’’ sticking out at the end of the line seems too obtrusively English an equivalent for the little curved Hebrew letter yod. (Cole’s line-breaks, moreover, are quite eccentric, and reflect nothing in the Hebrew.) Here is Halkin: What would I not do for the youth Who awoke in the night to the sound of the skilled flutes and lutes, And seeing me there, said to me, ‘‘Here drink the grape’s blood from my lips.’’ Oh, the moon was a comma writ small On the cloak of the dawn in watery gold. There is a nice stylistic fluency in that version (compare Halkin’s opening line with Cole’s) and a sense of finely elevated poetic utterance (‘‘the moon was a comma writ small’’) that bring us closer to the perfect pitch of HaNagid’s exquisite Hebrew. Halkin’s last line, moreover, manages to include ‘‘dawn’’ and ‘‘watery,’’ both present in the Hebrew and essential to the delicate pictorial effect, both unaccountably omitted in Cole’s version.
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But translating these poems steeped in the aesthetic of a distant age and marked with such a dazzling otherness of linguistic texture is an endless task, for which there is no perfect solution. Even in English approximation, however, one can sense an extraordinary poetic vitality that flows from the shifting interplay between the polished artifice of convention and the resonance of individual experience. Dan Pagis, the leading critic of this whole body of poetry, offered an account of it that moved from one side of the dialectic to the other: in his weighty Hebrew studies, he stressed the intricacies of convention and in a slim English volume, published posthumously, he reconsidered the same poets and detected the affecting lineaments of individual experience. Here is a haunting case in point. Poems about the fleeting span of human life and the inexorability of aging reflect a set convention of wisdom poetry in the Spanish medieval period. A more technical convention is a recurrent structure of challenge and response: a poem begins with the words, ‘‘he said,’’ followed by a challenge to the poet’s views or actions, and the poet in turn offers a vigorous rejoinder. But consider the following poem, which I quote in my own inadequate English version. It is not just a gesture of convention, since it marks a real date—1043—in the life of Shmuel HaNagid and expresses a very personal, and characteristic, brooding over life’s ephemerality and the nature of time. In this instance, moreover, the challenge is delivered, exceptionally, by a woman—a young woman, one suspects—and, as one critic has noted, HaNagid swerves from the convention of response, slipping instead into an interior monologue, as though the speaker felt there was no point trying to explain to her what fifty years could mean to him. Across the gap of centuries, the poem still poignantly speaks to anyone who has reflected on the ambiguities of life in time. She said, ‘‘Be glad that through God you have reached full fifty years in your world.’’ And how could she know There’s no difference for me between my days now passed and Noah’s days of which I’ve heard told? I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am— it pauses a moment, and then like a cloud moves on.
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Source: Robert Alter, ‘‘The Jew’s Last Sigh,’’ in New Republic, Vol. 214, No. 19, May 6, 1996, pp. 30–34.
SOURCES Brann, Ross, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, pp. 48, 53. HaNagid, Shmuel, Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, translated by Peter Cole, Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. xvii, xix, 145–47. May, Herbert G., and Bruce M. Metzger, eds., The Oxford Annotated Bible, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 628, 698, 823, 831, 870, 886–87. ‘‘Samuel Ha-Nagid,’’ in Jewish Encyclopedia.com, http:// www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view_page.jsp?artid=183& letter=S&pid=0 (accessed September 2, 2009). Scheindlin, Raymond P., Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 137.
FURTHER READING Frank, Daniel H., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2003. This volume examines Jewish thinkers who lived in Islamic and Christian lands during the Middle Ages (ninth through the fifteenth centuries) and wrote philosophy about God, creation, and similar theological matters—the type of matters that HaNagid incorporated into his poetry. Gerber, Jane S., Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience, Free Press, 1992. Gerber’s volume traces the history of Judaism in Spain, with emphasis on the Golden Age and its accomplishments in literature, philosophy, science, and other disciplines. This volume introduces readers interested in the poetry of HaNagid and his contemporaries to the cultural milieu in which they wrote. Nirenberg, David, ‘‘What Can Medieval Spain Teach Us About Muslim-Jewish Relation,’’ in CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring–Summer 2002, pp. 17–36. This article looks at contemporary problems between Muslims and Jews through the lens of Muslim-Jewish relations in medieval Spain. It raises for consideration the nature of the historical relationship between these two groups, with implicit suggestions for lessening modern tensions between them. O’Callaghan, Joseph F., A History of Medieval Spain, Cornell University Press, 1975.
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This volume is a good starting point for readers interested in the social, political, and cultural milieu in which HaNagid lived. Septimus, Bernard, ‘‘Hispano-Jewish Views of Christendom and Islam,’’ in In Iberia and Beyond: Hispanic Jews
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between Cultures, edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman, University of Delaware Press, 1998, pp. 43–65. This article provides insights into the position of Jews in medieval Spain and how Judaism interacted with Islam and Christianity during the era in which HaNagid lived.
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Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666 Anne Bradstreet, a seventeenth-century New England colonial woman, achieved fame when a family member had her privately circulated poems published in England. The collection, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published in 1650 and won Bradstreet so much critical and popular acclaim that her Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight, published in 1678, was warmly received as well. This later collection, which was published after the poet’s death, includes poems that are more personal in nature than those that appeared in the 1650 volume. ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ is a poem in this later, more personal style. It is elegiac in tone (an elegy is a poem of mourning), in that its focus is on the sense of loss the poet experiences following the destruction of her home. In the poem, Bradstreet strives to uphold a Puritan response to the tragedy, to view it as God’s will, and as a moral lesson. This Puritan element is a major theme of the poem. At the same time, Bradstreet struggles with powerful emotions, including deep sorrow and intense feelings of loss. The conflict between Bradstreet’s instinctive emotions and her intellectual, religious response creates a palpable tension in the poem.
ANNE BRADSTREET 1678
Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ was originally published in Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight in 1678. It is
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attend school but was privately instructed by her father, who worked as a steward for the Earl of Lincoln from 1619 to 1630. At the age of sixteen, she was stricken with smallpox, but survived. Shortly afterward, she married Simon Bradstreet, whom the family had known since Anne was a young child. In 1630, when she was eighteen years old, she and her husband and parents traveled with a group of Puritans to Massachusetts to begin a new life in the American colonies. Arriving in Salem, they moved throughout the colony, to Charleston, to Newton (which later became Cambridge), and to Ipswich. In 1645, the Bradstreets eventually settled in Andover, where they raised a family of eight children. Their first was born in 1633, the last in 1652. Bradstreet wrote poems prolifically during this time period and copied her verses for circulation among family members. In 1650, Bradstreet’s brother-in-law returned to England with a copy of the poems in hand, and, without Bradstreet’s knowledge, had them published as The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in America. Bradstreet later revised this collection. The revised works from The Tenth Muse, combined with new poems, including ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666,’’ resulted in the volume Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight. Bradstreet, however, would never see this book in print. The poet died of tuberculosis in Andover, Massachusetts, on September 16, 1672, and the volume of poetry was published in 1678.
Anne Bradstreet
available in The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley, and published in 1967 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley to Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke Dudley in 1612 in Northampton, England. Bradstreet did not
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The poems in the new volume were more personal in nature than the works on more academic topics that appeared in The Tenth Muse. In poems such as ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ Bradstreet recorded events in her life, and her emotional responses to them. Her poetry is extensively influenced by her Puritan faith, and spiritual themes, such as salvation and the nature of God’s will, are incorporated into simple domestic verses as well as into poems more overtly spiritual. What little information is possessed about Bradstreet’s life has, to a large degree, been gleaned from her poetry.
POEM SUMMARY Lines 1–6 Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ is not formally broken into
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stanzas. (A stanza is a unit of poetry, or a grouping of lines that divides the poem in the same way that a paragraph divides prose. Bradstreet’s poem appears on the page as a fifty-four-line poem without any stanzas.) However, each six-line subset of the poem roughly functions as a stanza in that it typically focuses on one idea. In the first six lines, Bradstreet opens the poem by setting the stage for the events of the night of July 10, 1666, observing that when she went to bed that night, she could not expect the sorrow she was soon to experience. She describes waking to loud noises and voices shouting. The sixth line of the poem in particular is open to dual meanings. In this line, Bradstreet speaks of her desire to keep her fear of the fire hidden, implying that if her faith were stronger she would not have been so afraid. Alternately, the line may be interpreted as suggesting that Bradstreet’s desire is to experience this trial, that she welcomes the impending tragedy as an opportunity to strengthen her faith.
Lines 7–12 In the next six lines, Bradstreet describes seeing the light of the fire for herself and praying to God to strengthen her, to help her during this time of need. Exiting her home, she begins to see the full view of what is happening and describes the flames consuming her home.
Lines 13–18 Bradstreet relates watching the house burning, how she stared until she could look no longer. At that moment, when she looked away, she praises God as one who both gives and takes, as the one responsible for leaving all of her possessions in the dust. She claims that God’s actions are just, that it is his will that must be done and not her own. With the superiority of God’s will asserted, Bradstreet tells herself that she must not worry or be discontented in the aftermath of the fire.
Lines 19–24 While God may have left her family bereft of its possessions, his actions, Bradstreet repeats, are just. Bradstreet further insists that God provides what is sufficient and necessary. She speaks of how later, after the fire, she passed the ruins of her home and was overwhelmed with sorrow at seeing what little remains of the places where her days were spent, where she used to sit and sleep.
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Lines 25–30 The lamentation for what is lost continues, as Bradstreet recollects the treasured pieces of furniture that have been destroyed, a favorite trunk, a chest. All her cherished possessions, she observes, are now ashes, and she can no longer look upon or touch them. No longer will guests visit her in that house, or sit and dine there.
Lines 31–36 The cataloging of loss continues in these lines, as Bradstreet notes that no visitors will gather and tell stories. No longer will candles warmly light her home. Bradstreet recalls treasured events that took place in her home. The mention in this section of the voice of a bridegroom in the house is a reference to her son on his wedding day, according to the critic Josephine K. Piercy in her 1965 study of Bradstreet’s poetry, titled Anne Bradstreet. Her home, she reveals in lines 21 through 36, was more than just a container for her property. The structure housed experiences, celebrations, conversations. In line 36, Bradstreet says farewell to all these things and attempts to brush off her attachment to the home and its contents as mere vanity.
Lines 37–42 Next, Bradstreet begins to scold herself, questioning where true wealth really resides. She asks herself whether or not she should have placed all of her hopes and dreams in the mortal world, in physical items, which have now succumbed to ruin. She admonishes herself to look heavenward, above the blowing dust and ashes that were once her home, and consider the house that God has built for her in heaven.
Lines 43–48 Reminding herself of how glorious heaven will be, Bradstreet also notes that her home in heaven will be permanent and will not be able to be destroyed like her home on earth. Alluding to the Christian notion that Jesus died for the sins of the faithful, Bradstreet describes her home in heaven as being paid for already by God.
Lines 49–54 In the final lines of the poem, Bradstreet continues to speak of the high price of her heavenly home, that price being the death of God’s son. But God’s gift to his people, the sacrifice of his son Jesus, provides her with enough wealth that she needs nothing more. Once again, she bids
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farewell to her home and her possessions. In the final two lines of the poem, Bradstreet prays to be released from her love of this world. She reassures herself that all her hopes and wealth are to be found in heaven.
THEMES Loss Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ is concerned primarily with the poet’s great sense of loss, along with her attempt to mediate this pain through her faith in God. Throughout the middle third of the poem, Bradstreet offers an emotional itemization of her material losses and suggests the psychological toll such losses have taken. The physical items that have been destroyed by the fire are described as her goods, her wealth, her treasures, and she draws specific attention to favorite items, including a trunk and a chest. She speaks often of such pieces being left in ashes, in ruins, as dust. In addition to listing to the objects she cherished, Bradstreet catalogues the memories her home enshrined. Recounting guests at her table, candles shining throughout the home, stories being told, Bradstreet emphasizes that the loss she is experiencing is significant. She has not merely been left without a few of her favorite things, objects that could probably be replaced. As a seventeenth-century mother and wife, she has lost her home, her sphere of influence. Her life and work—not just domestic chores, but the work of raising a family, running a household, entertaining guests, educating and nurturing her children—all occurred within the home that is now in ashes. In the fire she lost a part of her self. She attempts to minimize her sense of loss by viewing the objects that have burned as things to which she was vainly attached.
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takes as easily as he gives, and she blesses his name for doing so. At times, she finds comfort in reminding herself that God’s will takes precedence over her own. At other times, she scolds herself for her the pleasure she has taken in material things. She believes she has been vain to cling so much to worldly possessions. Bradstreet uses approximately the last third of the poem both to chide herself for mourning and to discuss the salvation that God has provided through the sacrifice of his son. She reflects on the heaven that awaits her, and in contemplating her permanent home with God in heaven, refers to the ashes of her own burned home as the dust from a heap of dung. Whether or not Bradstreet is successful in consoling herself through her faith is unclear. It is certain that she attempts to do so, for her poetry in general, while at times revealing her struggle with Puritanism, is not thought to be overtly ironic. Her effort at assuaging her pain through her faith must be viewed as an earnest one, but in the closing lines of the poem she asks for assistance in her efforts when she prays to be released from her love of the world and its attractions. Throughout the poem, one has the sense that Bradstreet pits her sorrow and mourning against her Puritan faith. She allows herself to feel grief only briefly before chastising herself. Her mourning, after she has lovingly and sorrowfully begun to consider what she has lost, is attacked in the final third of the poem as human weakness, something to be despised, a reminder of unworthiness. After itemizing her losses, she similarly recounts to herself the reasons she should learn from grief: God has sacrificed his son for her sins, and a home awaits her in heaven.
STYLE
Faith
Lyric Poetry
Bradstreet’s Puritan faith is an integral part of her poetry, and ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ is no exception. She uses her faith as a means of coping with her fear during the fire and with her intense feelings of loss in the aftermath of the fire. In the first third of the poem, Bradstreet reveals her terror and describes the way she turns to God for aid; she cries out for help, for the strength to see her safely through the immediate danger. Once she has left the house, Bradstreet is able to fully assess the scope of the tragedy. At once, she reminds herself that God
‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ is considered a lyric poem. A lyric poem is one in which the poet explores personal feelings and thoughts rather than telling a story. Typically short in length, lyric poems do not necessarily adhere to any formal structure. Modern lyric poems may be written in unmetered, unrhymed verse, or free verse, whereas earlier poems, such as Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ are often more structured. Bradstreet’s lyric does not contain stanzas. A stanza, or a grouping of lines in a poem, divides the poem into sections
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Bradstreet’s Puritan faith plays a prominent role in much of her poetry and is at the heart of the conflict in ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House.’’ Using online and print resources, research seventeenth-century New England Puritanism. What role did women play in the church? Who were prominent leaders in the church during Bradstreet’s lifetime? What did the Puritans believe about heaven, and who was considered saved (that is, eligible for heaven, rather than condemned to hell)? Create either a written report or a PowerPoint presentation compiling your findings. Be sure to cite all sources used in writing your paper or presentation. In 1658 Bradstreet wrote a lyric poem about the family she reared in the home that burned in 1666. Titled ‘‘I Had Eight Birds Hatcht in One Nest,’’ the poem explores the joys and pains of family life. Compare this poem with Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House.’’ Are the structures similar? What rhyme scheme and meter does Bradstreet employ? To what extent does Bradstreet’s Puritanism come into play in the earlier poem compared to the later one? How do the respective tones of the poems differ? Write a comparative essay in which you share your interpretations and your conclusions. Bradstreet was the first American female poet, and she wrote at a time when women were not typically encouraged to express themselves. Using resources such as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (published by Vintage in 1991), research the roles and daily lives of women during this time period in American history. What were society’s expectations of women? How did the domestic and social
the way paragraphs divide prose. The groupings typically display a repeated pattern in terms of number of lines and rhyme scheme. Bradstreet’s
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roles of men and women differ? What were society’s views on the education of women? Incorporate your findings into a written report or a PowerPoint presentation, or write and recite a poem about what your life might have been like if you had been a woman in the New England colonies in the seventeenth century.
The ruined physical structure of Bradstreet’s home is, in effect, the setting of her poem ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House.’’ The poem identifies some of the contents of the home but provides little information on the structure itself. Research the architecture of seventeenth-century New England, using as resources such books as American Home: From Colonial Simplicity to the Modern Adventure (by Wendell D. Garrett, David Larkin, Michael Webb, et al., and published by Universe in 2005). The first several chapters of this book discuss the architecture of early American homes and include images of period buildings. How rustic were the homes of Bradstreet’s day? How much variation in style was there in the architecture of this time? Incorporating images you find in print and online sources (images that you properly cite), create a presentation in which you discuss your findings. As an alternative assignment build a diorama of the house and the surrounding grounds.
Read Chapter 3 of The Colonial Mosaic: American Women 1600–1760 (1995) written by Jane Kamensky for young-adult readers. Compare what you have learned about Anne Bradstreet’s family life with the description of family life in this chapter. Construct an essay that compares and contrasts the lives of Bradstreet and other colonial women.
‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ does not contain a stanzaic structure, but rather consists of 54 lines of rhymed verse. While not divided
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one, but the designation of elegy is also applied to poems such as Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ that focus in a meditative fashion on other types of losses, or are used as expressions of solemnity or somberness. In Bradstreet’s elegy, the poet mourns the loss of her home, her favorite possessions, the place where happy memories have been created. In the elegy, Bradstreet plumbs the depths of her grief, exploring the particulars of the general loss of her house. For example, it is not just the loss of the physical structure, the shelter provided by her house, that is mourned. Rather, Bradstreet mourns the loss of individual objects and specific activities, such as dinner with guests, storytelling, the sound of voices in the home. The poet furthermore examines her response to her own grief, chastising herself for experiencing feelings of loss and attempting instead to feel comforted by her faith.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Seventeenth-Century Colonial Puritanism House on fire (Image copyright stocksnapp, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
into stanzas, the poem contains 27 couplets, or pairs of rhymed lines. Each couplet features the same metrical pattern. Meter is the pattern of unaccented and accented syllables in a line of poetry. A metrical unit consists of at least one unaccented syllable along with at least one accented syllable and is called a foot. The type of meter is described in terms of the number of feet per line of poetry. The pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in Bradstreet’s poem is iambic, a pattern consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. There are four such units in each line. Therefore, the poem is said to be written in iambic tetrameter. Within the confines of the formal structure of the poem, a structure consistent with the conventions of the time period, Bradstreet explores her emotional responses to the tragedy of losing her home and possessions.
Elegiac Poetry An elegy is a poem of mourning. Most often, elegies depict grief related to the loss of a loved
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Seventeenth-century Puritans were a sect of English Protestants who believed that the Church of England, although it had split from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, still needed to be ‘‘purified’’ from practices associated with the Church of Rome. Wishing to preserve an English Protestant faith untainted by Catholicism, some fought for change in England and were subsequently persecuted for their efforts. In 1630 and in the following years, many Puritans fled to the English colonies in America in order to escape violent punishments and death. Once in the colonies, Puritans embarked on a life lacking in many of the comforts enjoyed in England. As Rosamond R. Rosenmeier explains in an essay in Puritan Poets and Poetics: Seventeenth-Century American Poetry in Theory and Practice, edited by Peter White and Harrison T. Meserole, and published in 1985, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were settling a land still considered a wilderness. They also believed themselves to be living in the last days on earth before God’s final judgment on mankind and the return of Jesus to the world. Given the gravity of their situation as they understood it, the community felt it crucial that believers properly prepare themselves for Judgment Day. But as Rosenmeier further points out, an examination of Bradstreet’s writing reveals evidence of the conflict within the Puritan
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1660s: Seventeenth-century American colonists, as subjects of the English Crown, do not have a central governing body that presides over the colonies as a whole. Rather, individual colonies are ruled by governors. Bradstreet’s father, Thomas Dudley, serves as a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for a time, as does her husband, Simon Bradstreet. Today: Today the United States government is organized around three individual branches, designed to balance the power held by any one person or group. The three branches are the legislative (which includes Congress and the House of Representatives), the judiciary (the federal courts), and the executive (the offices of the president, vice president, and cabinet members). Each state is governed by its own legislative, judiciary, and executive branches.
1660s: Religious groups in the American colonies include the Protestant sect known as the Puritans, as well as Quakers and Baptists. Many practitioners of these faiths fled England, where punishments for nonconformity to the Church of England included violent beatings, maiming, and death.
community regarding the best way to approach their faith in the new land. Conflict within the community stemmed from disagreements about biblical interpretation, the nature and proof of salvation in church members, as well as church organization and the relationship of the church to the larger secular community. In general, Puritans focused on a strict moderation and regulation of their earthly desires, and their relationship with God was the supreme guiding force in their lives. Nothing in one’s personal life—not relationships, possessions, or vocation—was supposed to interfere with one’s devotion to God. Suffering and hardships were paths toward
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Today: The most prominent religion in the United States, according to a 2007 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, is Protestantism, a designation that, in the Pew survey, includes, among many, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and modern evangelical Protestants. The next most prominent religion in the United States is Catholicism. 1660s: American poetry is formal in structure, containing regular rhyme patterns and metrical structure. The works of such early American poets as Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are largely religious in nature and are often viewed as devotional pieces to God. Today: Much of modern American poetry is free verse poetry, poetry without set metrical structure or rhyme patterns. No subject is off limits to modern American poets, who write freely about religion, sexuality, war, and every day life, among other topics. Other poets devote themselves to the more formal poetic structures of the past. This movement, known as New Formalism, began in the 1970s and remains popular today. Twenty-first century New Formalist poets include such writers as Dana Michael Gioia and Rachel Hadas.
God, lessons in personal humility, and faith in God’s justice.
Seventeenth-Century Colonial Women Women in colonial New England helped to settle a land that bore little resemblance to the established communities in the England they had left. Elaine Showalter, in her 2009 examination of the American women writers, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, describes Bradstreet’s life as one of ‘‘extraordinary danger and deprivation.’’ In discussing the physical tasks required of the
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women of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Showalter itemizes the household duties that were required of women, tasks that included all of the cooking, cleaning, sewing, and laundering. Showalter also observes that women faced the challenges of giving birth and nurturing infants and children ‘‘in the wilderness.’’ Similarly, Adrienne Rich, in her foreword to The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley and published in 1967, describes the New England colonies in the early 1600s as ‘‘a time and place in which heroism was a necessity of life.’’ Rich further delineates Bradstreet’s challenges as a female author living in colonial America when she praises Bradstreet’s exceptional poetry, which was written, she states, while Bradstreet was ‘‘rearing eight children, lying frequently sick, keeping house at the edge of wilderness.’’ Compounding the normal daily struggles faced by a mother of eight in frontier Massachusetts were the additional spiritual challenges faced by Puritan women. According to Susan Pe´rez Castillo’s 1990 essay on gender roles and conflict within the colonial Puritan community, (an essay published in the Portuguese journal Revista da Faculdade de Letras Do Porto: Linguas e Literaturas), Puritan women were viewed as ‘‘irresponsible minors’’ and subject to punishment by their husbands for violating both civil and religious law. Castillo goes on to identify other oppressive regulations of female behavior, noting that women were not allowed to vote or to ask questions during church gatherings and were viewed as individuals likely to tempt men into illicit actions. Colonial New England Puritans, according to Showalter, clung to the notion of male intellectual superiority, yet women such as Bradstreet were nevertheless encouraged in their writing rather than punished.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The known early criticism of Anne Bradstreet’s poetry centers largely on the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. The contemporary opinions regarding her work appear to have been largely favorable. For example, Jeannine Hensley, in her introduction to the 1967 The Works of Anne Bradstreet speaks of the ‘‘general approval’’ Bradstreet’s first volume of poetry received. In Rosamond Rosenmeier’s introduction to Anne Bradstreet Revisited,
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her 1991 study of Bradstreet and her work, the critic observes that Bathsua Mankin (a female English writer and critic who lived during the same time period as Bradstreet) ranked Bradstreet as an ‘‘excellent Poet.’’ Rosenmeier also finds that, Bradstreet’s work seems to have been highly regarded during the next century as well; she cites the praise lavished on Bradstreet by the New England Puritan minister and writer Cotton Mather (1663–1728) as evidence of Bradstreet’s reputation as an admired poet. More recent criticism explores individual poems in depth. Criticism of Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ focuses heavily on the tension between the poet’s response to her tragedy and her Puritanism. Jim Egan, in his 1999 Authorizing Experience: Refigurations of the Body Politic in Seventeenth-Century New England Writing, explores the way the conflict between the experience of grief and the reassurances offered by the Puritan faith are mitigated in Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House.’’ In examining the poem, Egan finds that Bradstreet strives ‘‘to redirect longing away from family and toward God,’’ but that despite her efforts, ‘‘Bradstreet persists in distrusting experience’’ as a means of preparation for ‘‘spiritual existence.’’ Mitchell Breitwieser, in his 2007 National Melancholy: Mourning and Opportunity in Classic American Literature, examines Bradstreet’s elegies as explorations of loss and as challenges to Puritanism. Breitwieser describes ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ as ‘‘Bradstreet’s boldest defense of mourning,’’ in that the poem features not a person, but a material object—Bradstreet’s home—as ‘‘the lost object of love.’’ Similarly, Elaine Showalter, in her 2009 study of American female authors A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, emphasizes that Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ reflects the emotional distress the poet felt in spite of her attempts ‘‘to interpret the catastrophe as a divine warning against vanity and materialism.’’
CRITICISM Catherine Dominic Dominic is a novelist and a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she studies the transitions in Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
To My Husband and Other Poems, published in 2000 by Dover Publications, is a collection featuring Bradstreet’s best-known and highly regarded poems, including romantic verses to her husband. The collection also includes a selection of poems on motherhood and domestic life, and on the deaths of her parents and grandchildren. Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet, published in 2005 by Little, Brown, is a biography of Anne Bradstreet by Charlotte Gordon. Gordon explores Bradstreet’s life and work within the context of the hardships endured by the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Adrienne Rich, written by Wendy Martin and published in 1984 by the University of North Carolina Press, studies Bradstreet, Dickinson, and Rich as examples of feminist poets from three different time periods. Martin explores the way each woman’s society and culture shaped her views and her poetry.
The Account of Mary Rowlandson and Other Captivity Narratives, edited by Horace Kephart and published by Dover Publications in 2005, is a collection of captivity narratives (accounts, sometimes fictionalized, of early colonists being captured by Native Americans), including Rowlandson’s, which is among the best known of such narratives. Rowlandson, a contemporary of Bradstreet, was held captive by the Narragansett Indians in 1676, and her account of the experience (A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson) was published in 1682. The work describes the hardships she
House, July 10th, 1666’’ that reveal the tension between the dictates of the poet’s Puritan faith and her natural need to grieve in the aftermath of the
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endured and also contains her observations on daily life in a Native American community.
The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, written by Edmund S. Morgan, was originally published in 1958; a third edition was published by Longman in 2005. The work describes the experiences of Winthrop, who led English Puritans to New England in 1630; the Bradstreets sailed with him on the journey. Morgan’s work provides a young adult audience with the historical and religious background of the time period. The Witch of Blackbird Pond, written by Elizabeth George Speare, was originally published in 1958 and was reissued through Laurel Leaf in 1978. The book, which takes place in the Colony of Connecticut in 1687, is considered a classic young adult novel of historical fiction. The Newbery Award–winning novel explores, through the character of a young girl and the Quaker widow she befriends, the religious and political conflicts in New England Puritan communities. For the student of Bradstreet’s work, the novel provides a glimpse of the changes and developments in Puritan society. I, Too, Sing America: Three Centuries of African American Poetry, edited by Catherine Clinton and illustrated by Stephen Alcorn, is a collection of poems by African Americans. Some of the poems were written as early as the 1700s, offering students of Bradstreet’s poetry a look at the way poetry developed in colonial America (and beyond) among individuals with a different perspective. Targeted at young adult readers, the book was published by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children in 1998.
tragedy. She argues that the persistent shifts in focus, from faith, to grief, and back again, reveal the highly personal nature of the poem as well as
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demonstrating the emotional effects of the unresolved internal battle Bradstreet endures. Bradstreet’s ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666’’ swings like a pendulum between Bradstreet’s Puritan beliefs and her deep emotional turmoil regarding the loss of her home. While it is tempting to try to assess whether or not Bradstreet’s sorrow is successfully mitigated or addressed by her faith, such an exercise would not only be highly subjective, but would also be misguided. It will always be debatable whether or not there is a clear winner in the conflict between grief and faith in the poem; rather, what is most significant is the nature of this battle. The poem’s final lines emphasize the futility of attempting to draw definitive conclusions about any resolution Bradstreet may have been conveying. In these last two lines, Bradstreet divulges her desire for her spiritual beliefs to be sufficient to see her through her life so that she may one day reside in heaven. Of crucial importance here is that Bradstreet ends the poem with a prayer for assistance; she asks to be relieved of her love for her life on earth. The only certainty ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ offers is that Bradstreet longs for her faith to satisfy her emotional and spiritual needs. Whether or not it possesses that ability or even that potential is not conveyed; there is no resolution for Bradstreet. However, an examination of the poem’s twists and turns, of the way the battle between grief and faith is waged, illuminates the poet’s sense of longing, mourning, and conflict and aids in the reader’s understanding of the poem’s resultant tension. ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ shifts repeatedly from the poet’s extreme emotional distress to her grasping at the structures of her Puritan faith for support. In the poem’s first seven lines, Bradstreet describes the scene of waking from sleep during the night to the terrifying noises and sights of the house fire within which she finds herself. In these moments of horror, she turns to God, making the first of many transitions in the poem from her emotional suffering to her seeking of strength in her faith. Lines 8 through 10 mark her first appeal to God; they are a simple request for emotional and spiritual support. Bradstreet turns quickly back to the trial at hand in lines 11 through 13, where she watches the flames devastate her home. Her phrasing in these lines suggests she is almost unable to look away from this horrifying scene,
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THE ONLY CERTAINTY ‘UPON THE BURNING OF OUR HOUSE’ OFFERS IS THAT BRADSTREET LONGS FOR HER FAITH TO SATISFY HER EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL NEEDS. WHETHER OR NOT IT POSSESSES THAT ABILITY OR EVEN THAT POTENTIAL IS NOT CONVEYED; THERE IS NO RESOLUTION FOR BRADSTREET.’’
but when she does, in line 14, it is to praise God, and to remind herself that God both gives and takes. Bradstreet spends less time than before in the spiritual world of her faith, unable in the immediacy of the tragedy to take any comfort in God. Although she has sought God’s aid, the most solace she can glean from her faith at the moment is the acknowledgement of God’s ability to take away some of the gifts he has blessed her with—her home and her possessions. In line 15, Bradstreet focuses on what God has done, stating that it was God who rendered all her personal belongs into dust. Just as instinctively as Bradstreet turns to God for comfort, she also posits blame for the tragedy with him. Yet her shame in doing so springs up just as quickly, in lines 16 through 18, revealing a new dimension to her faith. In these lines, Bradstreet insists it is God’s will, not her own, that is just. Deferring to God’s judgment, Bradstreet chastises herself for having felt wronged by God’s actions. She reminds herself that she should not complain. Lines 19 and 20 indicate the poet’s insistence that God is just, and that he has left her family with what they need in life, nothing more. In her emphasis on being provided with what God has determined to be sufficient, Bradstreet suggests her own guilt in having wanted more than what God has determined she needs. Despite the poet’s guilt in having wanted more than God deemed necessary, in having desired more than God thought she deserved, Bradstreet nevertheless returns to the subject of what she has possessed, belongings she has cherished, items she no longer has. Lines 21 through 35 represent Bradstreet’s extended exploration
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of her loss and grief. She allows herself for the first time a space of uninterrupted mourning. For fifteen lines, Bradstreet does not interrupt her grief with her self-admonishment regarding her need for greater faithfulness. She ceases blaming herself for wanting material possessions, and she relinquishes, for a short while, the scolding and shaming. Bradstreet tenderly lays to rest a past lived in what appears to have been a pleasant and joyful home. One can intuit from these lines that to this point Bradstreet’s life, whatever its tragedies, was also filled with joy and love. The depth of her sorrow at her loss suggests how truly she must have enjoyed a happy and loving home before the fire. Bradstreet offers equal tribute to the home’s contents, its former guests, the stories told, and the memories her family created there. She speaks of favorite things and pleasantries, dinners shared and stories swapped. Her images capture not just objects, but the subtleties of what constitutes a home. Bradstreet grieves, observing that all such memories have been silenced. The next line of the ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House,’’ line 36, marks the poem’s the next transition, and is jarring in its abruptness. Bradstreet first bids farewell, in French, to the remains of her beloved home, and in the next breath disregards the entire construct of home—her memories, her belongings—as a representation of her vanity. In characterizing so much as so little, Bradstreet shows the extent of her guilt regarding her attachment to her material possessions. From lines 36 through 52 she continues this process of devaluing the objects and concepts that she has just mourned. She chides and scolds herself for not trusting God and derides her belongings as meaningless. Perhaps the most visually startling example of the poet’s expressed contempt for her material wealth is her comparison of the ash from her burned home with the dust rising from a heap of dung. This characterization is so drastically different from what she has conveyed in the previous lines that one can either begin to doubt the poet’s sincerity or pity her for her faith-inspired need to deny her genuine feelings of loss and grief. The extreme way in which Bradstreet attempts to renounce her attachment to her home and her treasures is a clear demonstration of the conflict her faith has generated within her. While Puritanism has taught her that nothing should be an obstacle in her devotion to God, her life experiences, as this poem suggests, have been so overwhelmingly positive that her
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duty to her faith was extremely difficult to fulfill. In the poem, Bradstreet characterizes trials and suffering as instructive. Loss of personal items, as her lines indicate, should be viewed as a punishment for vain attachments to earthly possessions, and as a lesson that greater and permanent spiritual wealth awaits the faithful. To this point, Bradstreet has not only expressed heartfelt sorrow regarding her loss, she has conveyed extreme frustration with her own emotional reaction. She has loved deeply and, consequently, she mourns deeply. Compelled then to deny her bereavement, Bradstreet reveals the turmoil wrought by the Puritan notion that grieving for one’s loss suggests that one bears too strong an attachment to material possessions and that such intense feelings regarding worldly objects and relationships impede the journey toward God. The last two lines of the poem reveal much about the poet’s attempts to place the fullness and richness of her life within the proper spiritual context. They are lines pregnant with doubt, confusion, and longing. After bidding farewell again to her possessions in line 52, lines 53 and 54 suggest her yearning for release from her worldly desires. Bradstreet seeks in these lines the ability to value her impending heavenly rewards more highly than her life in this world; she pleads to be allowed to possess this attitude. In making this request, it seems apparent that while she longs for the ability to see her life in this faithful way, she does not yet possess the proper Puritan attitude. At the heart of this poem is the turmoil in Bradstreet between what she should feel and what she does feel. The poet seeks an attitude, a Puritan mindset, in which the world is renounced in favor of God. At the same time she mourns for what she has lost, she grieves for her things, her memories, her past, her home. At the end of the poem, Bradstreet seems to be grieving precisely because she grieves at all for her loss. Source: Catherine Dominic, Critical Essay on ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Tom Sleigh In the following excerpt, Sleigh explains Bradstreet’s view of ‘‘American’’ in American poetry. As a boy, I remember one of the few Sundays that our family went to church. Our regular attendance was partly hampered by the fact that one Easter Sunday my older brother, on a dare from Weegee Hansen, hit Reverend Fox in the back of the head with a water balloon: you can
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imagine the withering effect this might have on tender religious feelings, especially when Reverend Fox turned up at our house later that afternoon, seeking, as he put it, ‘‘to wring that little sinner’s neck.’’ But on the particular Sunday I have in mind, Reverend Fox recounted the story of Saul on the way to Damascus, in which God knocks Saul, the Christian persecutor, off his horse and he rises up from the dust as the apostle Paul. The miracle of the conversion went right by me. All that I could think about was the fate of the horse: Was Paul a better master than Saul? When God knocked Saul into the dust, did the horse also feel the blow? What kind of fodder did the horse get that evening in Damascus? The fact that my mind focused on the horse first, and Saul second, indicates how far I am from comprehending the mind of a truly religious sensibility, for whom Paul’s conversion would have been a template: the fallen consciousness is brought to God’s light by the fire of faith, and the self that suffers the flames is all the better for the scorching. Although my sympathies may lie with the horse and not with God’s implacable heat, implicit in this conversion story are questions about identity, how it gets established, and what forces are sufficient to sponsor it. In the realm of poetry cocktail parties, you get to hear your share of conversion stories: cocktail parties being what they are, no one is under oath. And so I once witnessed a poet undergo multiple conversions in a single evening: depending on the confessor’s faith, this Paul/Saul claimed to be an autobiographical poet one moment, a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet the next, a narrative poet after that. Totally apart from whether or not these professions were sincere, is the question as to why a poet shouldn’t be able to inhabit all these positions at the same time. And it’s an interesting question as to why this kind of fluidity causes such unease in the poetry world, as well as in the realm of cultural debate. If you claim to be in league with the aesthetics of poet X, then you can’t possibly like the work of poet Y. One aspect of this unease is the ongoing and inevitable debate about the place of subjectivity in art. What are its limits and possibilities, its responsibilities and risks? The varying camps of cultural and critical theory in which ‘‘I’’ is both a grammatical project and projection of systems of power, and the almost pre-literate hostility that some poetic scribblers feel toward any attempt
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ABSTRACTED FURTHER AND FURTHER FROM ITS DIVINE SOURCE, BRADSTREET’S VERSION OF A RELIGIOUS SELF GIVES WAY TO THE EMERSONIAN SELF, THE WHITMANIAN SELF.’’
to call the authority of ‘‘I’’ into question, makes for a lot of noise—some of this noise is what a friend calls ‘‘a tempestio in a teapotio,’’ the usual jockeying for audience that every generation is heir to, while some of it harks back to a reigning and basic question that underlies American imaginative writing from its beginning in Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor. Emerson formulated it when he asked what was ‘‘American’’ about American poetry, and what and whom should American poetry serve. But it exists in embryo in Bradstreet, when she declares that she wants no ‘‘Bayes’’ of laurel as handed down by tradition, but is content with a home-grown ‘‘wholsome Parsley wreath. . . . ’’ While the poem seems like a form of obeisance to God’s inscrutable will, the poem seems to hint that all is not right in the New World’s dunghill mists. Bradstreet’s admission that the voices calling out ‘‘Fire’’ dovetail with a secret desire of her own makes one wonder about Bradstreet’s hidden tendencies toward the community: is she a kind of spiritual pyromaniac wrestling with her more saintly self over how best to burn down God’s house? Of course I realize that one of Bradstreet’s aims is to use her own persona as a vehicle to proselytize. And from that point of view, her self-admonishments are both exemplary to others as well as sincerely felt. I suppose what I’m talking about is a kind of historical sixth sense that the poem exudes to a secular reader like myself. In Bradstreet’s New World, the tenor of religious feeling is undergoing a subtle shift: because there are no rose windows and high-flying spires to buttress your belief, to a sincere Puritan like Bradstreet, God’s personal presence begins to imbue everything, from a chest or a trunk to a burning house. And as God’s personal involvement in your life increases, so too does His responsibility for your fortunes. And that level of personal
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intimacy is bound to have serious psychological consequences. As I said before, I realize that my horsy loyalties may reflect my own secular shortcomings in understanding an intelligence like Bradstreet’s. Nonetheless, when Bradstreet shifts from ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘thine’’ toward the end of the poem, I sense the ground of being shifting as the pronouns shift: this division of soul is finding expression on the level of grammar. Bradstreet’s ambivalence about losing ‘‘that store I counted best’’ is subtly signaled by her use of the second and third person pronouns to address the ‘‘mighty Architect’’ and keep him at a slight grammatical remove. In contrast, she lavishes affection and regret on her burned out house by addressing it as ‘‘thee.’’ And in the final couplet, Bradstreet’s teethgritting resignation is likewise undercut by a subtle shift in pronouns in the last third of the poem. Once she learns that her house is on fire, she goes from addressing the Lord as ‘‘my God’’ in the eighth line, to calling on God in the third person, even while she tries to bless ‘‘His name that gave and took.’’ Of course, one wonders why she should need to bless His name at all. Shouldn’t she be the one asking for His blessing? Further evidence of this psychic strain is the way she addresses herself in a strangely disassociated second person, which at first seems like a form of self-address, but in fact is an address to her house. When she says, ‘‘Under thy roof no guest shall sit,’’ the psychic blurring between herself and her ‘‘pleasant things’’ that ‘‘in ashes lie’’ signals the spiritual depths in which she now burns. It’s as if the shift in pronouns signals a clandestine desire to cut loose from the Puritan God and explore her own peculiar psychological mechanisms. She splits off from the sorrowing self in order to admonish that self, and in the process the ‘‘I’’ sanctioned by the divine principle has begun to split along the grain. The more Bradstreet exhorts herself to see in her personal tragedy a divine lesson, the further she ventures into her own subjective wilderness. Apparently obedient, her mind may be the horse ridden by God, but it harbors animal tendencies to rear up and throw Him. Abstracted further and further from its divine source, Bradstreet’s version of a religious self gives way to the Emersonian self, the Whitmanian self. For the self in American poetry has usually been dependent on some sponsoring transcendental source, even in a poem like ‘‘The
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Waste Land’’ with its reflexive inclusion of personified spiritual qualities of Datta (give), Dayadhvam (sympathize), and Damyatam (control) from the Upanishads, not to mention the weird, oneiric Christ-like figure wandering in the desert who sinisterly invites the reader to ‘‘Come in under the shadow of this red rock.’’ Since its inception in Bradstreet, American poetry has never been content to let the self hang in the wind, subject to the uncertainty of its own status, but able to experience that uncertainty in its own independent way. And this seems as true to me now as it was to those in the seventeenth century. When I mentioned this view to a friend of mine, he thought it was a pretty strange claim, since in his mind any poetry that wasn’t overtly devotional more or less had to be based on epistemological uncertainty. And I don’t disagree. Maybe what I’m talking about is more an attitude of inquiry, a special attentiveness to this metaphysically weightless condition. The image I have in mind is of a poet in a spacesuit, crossing the void with a little jet pack, and when that fails, behaving like Milton’s Satan as he fights his way through chaos, who ‘‘With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way.’’ In other words, to make that uncertainty a place to explore so that the poet doesn’t try to vanquish it by falling back on universalizing abstractions—which are, as always, in abundant supply. In our age, God the supreme authority has been displaced by secular abstractions like ‘‘hegemonic discourse’’; or if you are a semiologist, the ‘‘transcendental signifier.’’ And the poetic doctrine of ‘‘deep image,’’ which saw consciousness as a set of images pre-existent to tainted history, looks to Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious as its sponsoring, transcendental authority. Even theories of poetry that stress language’s primacy seem based on a displaced passion for the assertion in John: ‘‘In the beginning was the Word.’’ And aesthetic stances like objectivism, imagism, and followers of projective verse tend to treat the world’s surface as a kind of phenomenological absolute. We may give lip service to human subjectivity as its own self-sufficient cause for being, but even the scientific assumptions surrounding neurological research, such as the right-brain/ left-brain structures of consciousness, have been enlisted as a way to root the self in something outside its own waveringly subjective force field and experiential flow. This scientific way of explaining consciousness as brain function resembles a kind of Cartesian variant: ‘‘If my
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mind is structured like this and perforce must think like that, therefore I am the projection of that structure that I think of as if it were my self.’’ Shifting from an epistemological to an historical perspective about the place of the self in American poetry, we return to the questions Emerson asked: what makes American poetry ‘‘American’’ and not European; and whom or what should American poetry serve. Frost’s half-joking line, ‘‘The land was ours before we were the land’s’’ points to not only the irony of a colonial situation in which the colonists, fleeing the oppression of their mother country, feel alienated in the promised land, but their unconscious arrogance in assuming that the land is theirs while being blind to their own murderous intention to take the land by force from its Indian inhabitants. Of course the ironies I’m deploying here are more mine than Frost’s, since he did read the poem at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, hardly the venue for revisionist thoughts about the United States’ westward expansion. But if you squint at those lines from a certain historical perspective, Frost’s repetition of ‘‘we’’ implies a queasiness about who this ‘‘we’’ really is, in which ethnic and class divisions are elided so that ‘‘we’’ may possess, and become possessed by, the land whose price ‘‘was many deeds of war.’’ The answers to these questions about American poetry’s status as American—which seem narrowly chauvinistic at worst, and at best a goad to make a ‘‘nation language’’ that isn’t cowed by what Seamus Heaney once called ‘‘the Absolute Speaker’’ of bureaucratic and technocratic officialdom—don’t seem to have entertained the notion that American poetry could be a force in its own right, a self-sufficient category of human consciousness. Either its purpose was to serve God in the New World theocracy; or, as democracy replaced theocracy, it must serve, according to Whitman, as a prophetic source for the ever renewing energies of democratic experiment. But to return to Bradstreet: as Puritanism became less and less the attempt to fathom the mystery of God’s grace in the New World wilderness, and more and more focused on individual salvation and self-scrutiny for the purpose of exposing sin, the native skepticism of such scrutiny inevitably turned against its transcendental author, the hitherto unimpeachable ‘‘I am that I am.’’ Belief becomes non-belief through Puritanism’s own genius for self-scrutiny and self-doubt,
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and so the grounding authority of the self is forced to find new ground: Emerson floats the concept of the Over Soul, a version of God as human and human as God, but all so undifferentiated that the self begins to blur into universal consciousness: it becomes wispy, thin, fog that mists a mirror. And then Whitman attempts to clean the mirror by focusing on the body: this seems like a promising direction, to ground the self in the universality of sexual feeling; he calls this ‘‘adhesiveness,’’ but his missionary zeal about eros as a democratic force doesn’t take into account how oblique sex is, how opaque, how irremediable to generalization—people actually having sex in Whitman is too often a question of hygiene, physical and mental, and too seldom a matter of ‘‘sharp-toothed touch.’’ Whitman’s intuition of the self grounded in sexual pleasure smudges out into his proselytizing zeal to make us all into mothers and fathers of clean-limbed sons and daughters of the Republic. After Whitman’s vision of democracy based on the body gets trampled under by the Civil War and the national psyche splits into North and South; after the Robber Barons who endow our major museums cement the divisions between the classes; after advertising seduces the language of private desire into the language of consumerism; after Eliot and Pound explode the remnants of the self into the many voices of ‘‘The Waste Land,’’ and the historical perspectives and personae of the Cantos; after New Criticism puts pressure on the work and begins to displace the author as the subject of literary study; after autobiography becomes just another form of psychological and historical projection; after ‘‘confessional poetry’’ becomes simply a blanket term of disapproval of certain kinds of done-to-death subject matter; after the death of the author, both as a joke and as a serious challenge to the myth of authorial mastery over language; after re-readings of cultural icons like Shakespeare, such that Shakespeare’s heroes are removed from the realm of action in the world, and made into specular instances of various schools of psychoanalytic and cultural critique; after media conglomeration and the proliferation of ‘‘real time,’’ ‘‘real life’’ news coverage and television shows, such that the self observing the self impersonating the self becomes the most current form of naturalism; after a sense of time as serial begins to fragment into a sense of time as discrete, so that the actual moment of writing becomes part of the drama of
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writing, as in Beckett’s speakers who make the phenomenon of their own vocalizing the focus of the story; after all this, who would dare claim that the ‘‘I’’ isn’t a phantom and a projection of language, a mere grammatical convenience? Add to all this the lingering prestige of the Tel Quel group declaring that writing (as Italo Calvino informs us in his essay, ‘‘Cybernetics and Ghosts’’) no longer consists in ‘‘narrating but in saying that one is narrating.’’ According to this idea, the immediate claim of sympathy on the reader by an ‘‘I’’ confident of its status as not only a linguistic entity, but as a flesh and blood speaker whose fate is of intrinsic interest, has come to an end. What one says becomes identified with the act of saying. The psychological person is really a grammatical person, defined by its place in the discourse. But I balk at this—there is something a little canned about all of it, a little too symptomatic of a kind of expected, ‘‘with it’’ theorizing that ignores what I feel when I write. And so I don’t quite know how to take my own list . . . is it merely poetry gloom, culture gloom, spleen? Or in a more serious vein, could the list be symptomatic of a desire to make up stories that would join in the weave of stories that blanket all earth’s creatures in an atmosphere of compassion and intelligent concern—what Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere? If this notion seems a little too idealized, its hard-headed corollary would be a pluralist, quasi-anthropological way of understanding the world, in which there are many different cosmologies and cultures all functioning with equal authority, if not equal in their political and economic status. Both of these models pose a quiet challenge to what vestiges of the Whitmanian self remain. After all, when Whitman says, ‘‘I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,’’ underneath the wellmeant identification, a certain violence is being done in that omission to ask. Yes, the poet is identifying with the wounded, but the identification is also a kind of erasure of that person’s local cultural and historical circumstances. So is there a way of allowing the voice of the wounded to speak through the poem, while preserving the right of the poet to make the kind of confident self-assertions that Whitman makes? In other words, how can the poet make the partiality of ‘‘I’’ into an interesting formal feature among many, as opposed to the be-all end-all of
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lyric utterance? More importantly, how can the solitary singer’s story participate in the larger story, as Wallace Stevens puts it, ‘‘of the planet of which it was part. . .’’? My notion of the ‘‘I’’’s partiality depends to a certain extent on understanding the range of solutions to the problem of solitary singing and its potential participation in the larger story of the planet. One of the most prevalent solutions has been to favor dissolution of the teller of tales into a tale telling itself, language out on its own space walk, floating through referentiality, as opposed to being anchored in it. You might call this a constructivist perspective, in which words have their own autonomy and plasticity, and meaning doesn’t depend upon a solitary singer, but is the result of the poet’s exploratory relationship to many different lexicons, ranging from the slogans of advertising to political rhetoric to the whisperings of private feeling. Of course the danger here is relegating the singer to a language prop, or what one critic dubbed the ‘‘subjectivity effect.’’ And then there’s Allen Ginsberg’s notion of poetry as ‘‘first thought, best thought.’’ This approach makes the solitary singer’s song the by-product of a meditative practice of mindfulness that would release us from the world of illusion to the eternal truths behind the veil of Maya. To further that recognition, Ginsberg was willing to sacrifice what he called ‘‘the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit’’ that undergirded the myth of poetic mastery. A poem’s raison d’eˆtre is to serve as a prayer wheel whose mind-expanding spin helps us contemplate the inexhaustible forms of reality, and of the unity behind those forms. His poetry of swift notation proposes that the self is nothing more—or less— than the ebb and flow of perception, in which perception is a springboard to comprehending the Oneness of the universe. Another tack is Robert Duncan’s practice of poetry as composition by field: the page is a field of possibility and the words are actions on that field. That the actions are of consequence becomes a matter of knowing when the self is at the right spiritual pitch to plot a significant course in words, the words open to the accident of inspiration at every moment of composition. There is no perfected ‘‘form’’ for the poem to take on, no conventional adherence to beginnings, middles, or ends. Every poem the poet writes is really the sign of a continually unfolding
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revelation that only comes to an end at the poet’s death—and not even then, because the story is taken up by other poets, and in Auden’s phrase, ‘‘modified in the guts of the living.’’ And now I hesitate. My sense of the dilemma that faces contemporary poets and how they represent ‘‘I’’ might simply boil down to this: no matter how fragmented words appear on a page, they will tell a certain story, if only as the trace of the mind that willed them onto the paper. And so the ‘‘I’’ is still intact, if not as a personality in words, then as words diffusing the traces of a personality, a doppelga¨nger projected outward from the page. And so the mere presence of a poem suggests that the poet is also a subjective presence, if only as a projection of the operations of language. Well, and so what? Who didn’t know that if you saw marks on a page that someone put them there? But is that really as obvious as it sounds? Well, yes—provided that you’re willing to grant those marks the provisional status of ‘‘author’’—but if you aren’t, or if your initial reaction is to think this is writing, l’e´criture, an inheritance of the tribe’s codes and customs, as opposed to thinking this is the texture of an individual mind, then the question of the authority of who is speaking becomes important in our experience of these marks. Most serious readers float somewhere halfway between these two shores and reserve judgment about the issue of authority until they are well into the experience of reading. But this very reservation of judgment is also a hesitation that affects writers: I can identify at least three tendencies in American poetry that this self-consciousness has engendered: the fact that ‘‘I’’ has been impeached as too confident in its pronouncements has forced some poets to adopt the tone of self-reflexive irony and jokiness that undercuts the commitment of the voice to any particular tone, stance, or provisional stab at truth. This is an extremely popular stance, and amounts to a widespread period style. Another strategy is to adopt the tone of phenomenological inquiry, but to do it in such a way that suggests an obsessive temperament relentlessly interrogating perception: the stance here is that the obsession flows from an obsession with ‘‘truth’’—a truth that may already be discredited as merely a projection of human desires, but is better than nothing. When this stance amounts to more than a surface manner, it can produce poems of great power and integrity, as in the
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work of Frank Bidart, or in the best poems of John Ashbery. But all too often, it degenerates into the third tendency: an armored, ‘‘smart’’ sounding vocabulary that steers back and forth between the referential and the hiply nonreferential, a kind of brainy, process-is-all surrealism that at its best promises verbal innovation, and at its worst feels utterly formulaic in its disjunct leaps of association—a more complex variant of the above mentioned joky ironist, but who as an undergraduate read a smattering of Lyotard and Baudrillard and picked up their tone of philosophical inquiry. But let me put my cards on the table and suggest another way of thinking about the impeached ‘‘I.’’ What I’m proposing is not to be taken as a manifesto, but a speculation on how the self in poetry is a kind of self-impersonation, the subject of a voice, or voices, that are always aware of their own provisional status. As I mentioned earlier, I want to incorporate that provisionality into the poem’s formal structure. The shortcoming in Whitman’s stance toward the wounded, in which Whitman desires to be the wounded person, is that he seems unconscious of his own limited subjectivity. The verbal formulas Whitman resorts to, the catalog, the relentless parallelisms, speak to the automatic nature of Whitman’s response. And the difference between a poem like ‘‘The Waste Land’’ in its multiple voicings and many-eyed perspectives, and my speculation, has to do with Eliot’s manipulation of the voices in the poem. Great a poem as it is, there is something faintly imperious about Eliot’s virtuosity, the sense of a puppet master deploying the materials of his poem with just a touch too much certainty. The material, for all its portents of chaos, never really seems on the verge of spinning out of control. And it’s precisely this sense of the material beginning to get away from the poet, the sense that the voices in the poem have an autonomy beyond the authorial presence, that interests me. And from a reader’s viewpoint, I mean more than the fact that poems often bear contrary meanings to their authors’ overt intentions, as in the case of Blake reading Milton and saying that Milton was of the Devil’s party, but without knowing it. In my scenario, the poet is deeply attuned to the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in having both devils and angels whispering in his ear: the poet must express, simultaneously, the many ways that such opposing and unruly recognitions might function in a poem. Many contemporary writers have responded to this question of self as self-impersonation, but
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what do I mean by that phrase? Of course, it’s a truism that the first thing any writer does is impersonate whoever the ‘‘I’’ is that does the writing. Italo Calvino, in an essay on the levels of reality in literature, creates a flow chart that starts with Gustave Flaubert, the author of various books who then impersonates the author of the book he is currently working on, in this case, Madame Bovary, who then projects himself into Emma Bovary who then projects herself into the Emma Bovary she would like to be. The salient thing about this flow chart is that it works in reverse as well, with each link in the chain reaction transforming, both forwards and back, all the other links. So when Flaubert says, ‘‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi,’’ the question arises as to how much of the ‘‘I’’ who shapes the characters is, in fact, an ‘‘I’’ who has been shaped by the characters. In American literature, this way of thinking has been taken to an extreme point by a poet like James Merrill in ‘‘The Changing Light at Sandover,’’ in which the poem’s author, James Merrill, is also the speaker of the poem who also becomes a character denominated in his speeches by the initials, JM, even as the entire poem’s cosmological machinery is made present to the author/character through the oracular voicings of a Ouija board. This is obviously a radically different and mischievous way of thinking about writing than the myth of the writer as a little god or as a master of language who ‘‘treats’’ his material by giving it style. But you don’t have to go as far as Merrill does in order to see that this flow chart notion of intersubjectivity upends the traditional hierarchy of author set above his so-called ‘‘characters.’’ How seriously do I mean all this? I don’t for a moment imagine that anyone will sit down with this model in their head and apply it systematically. But what I’m interested in is finding a way of talking about the slippery transactions that go on between whoever ‘‘I’’ is and the words that ‘‘I’’ is putting on the page: the old model of revision as the writer working toward a formal unity seems to me far too limiting a description of the possible ways of writing poems. And since one of the crucial determinants in how you think about the art is the way you envision embodying the self in language, I’m interested in putting forth a new description that opens up the old model, if not exactly exploding it. The various levels of reality that interact in the creation of art, the empirical, psychological, supernatural, aesthetic, mythic, all of which sort together in a play like Hamlet (e.g., the political rottenness of
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Denmark; Hamlet’s state of mind; Hamlet’s father’s ghost; the play within the play; and the actors killed off as characters and resurrected as themselves at the curtain call), suggest just how insufficient and blinkered this all too settled notion of ‘‘I’’ is. But how would a poet actually write the kind of poem I envision? Let’s imagine P walking down the street to do some shopping, his own internal monologue fissioning off in various directions: PTA, long-ago memories of latenight heroin parties, a fantasy about the Medal of Honor being given to John Waters, a plan to set aside certain hours in the afternoon to re-read Paul Valery’s musings on the character of Monsieur Teste, that monster of abstraction who knows the plasticity of thought because everything Monsieur Teste thinks his mind obligingly performs. P has a little notebook in his pocket, and suddenly these random thoughts begin to suggest words: the words keep getting distracted by a not-too-original erotic fantasy, a sort of bookmark that marks off the page of desire that P is currently perusing. But brushing away the thought, P sits on a bench, takes out the notebook, all the while feeling a little foolish to be doing this outdoors at a bus stop rather than at home at his desk: but the words are beginning to announce themselves: ‘‘The window is stuck. First tragedy of the day.’’ And suddenly P is no longer P, he is stretched between his various thoughts and roles, he is stepping out of his skin and plunging into the currents of language. As P scribbles though, he begins to be aware of other P’s that want to say things: the P that doubts that windows are tragedies, the P that wants to salvage that sense of tragedy by turning it into a joke, the P that begins to feel despair that any of these words will ever make it into a finished poem, let alone get published in a book of poems. And then P has a savage turn against the ‘‘I’’ that is writing the poem and puts down the notebook in disgust, suddenly torn between his sense of real tragedies, what he knows is the political awareness of the poem, and his desire to insist on the window’s stuckness as indeed feeling like a tragedy, a metaphysical condition he can’t escape from. And so the poet is stretched between politics and transcendence, and feels a growing hostility toward any settled position, and more and more desperate to be affected by, and responsive to, all positions at once. In Seamus Heaney’s words, the poet is disposed to be ‘‘negatively rather than positively capable.’’
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And then he begins to pull away from the window and to try to view it from the farthest reaches of space, or to view it from as great a temporal distance as possible, in order to give that negative capability free play. Now he is channeling the spirit of George Herbert in which a human being ‘‘is a brittle crazie glass’’; and as he peers through that glass he’s also looking through Larkin’s high windows, meditating on the ‘‘sun-comprehending glass, / And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless,’’ and suddenly he is taking out his pencil again and writing a very different kind of poem: a poem that might say ‘‘I,’’ but in which a ‘‘self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration,’’ in Elizabeth Bishop’s phrase, has taken over all the anxieties, the hesitations and squirmings. And what to say about his concentration except that it seems neither an act of the self or the product of the many different voices that consciousness is woven from. It speaks, as Kafka says, with the voice of an alien stranger, but a stranger whose voice seems to resonate inside P, if not exactly belonging to P. And of course that voice keeps diffusing into voices: the voice of tradition that Herbert and Larkin represent, the voice of the social world that P inhabits, the voice of English itself in the way it inflects, reflects, and projects outward the words flowing from that ‘‘self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration,’’ in which will and imagination are involved in a call and response of completely mutual entailment. I realize that this description can be dismissed as mere soft-focus blur—but that blur seems more true to the actual process of writing a poem than a more coherent laying out of terms and principles based on a myth of mastery of language. Of course, allowing yourself such permeability is its own talent. I see in that talent a kind of transcendent achievement that nevertheless has nothing to say definitively about the transcendence of the self. Of course, much contemporary academic criticism has focused on calling into question the notion of a transcendental self, and in the process tries to eliminate the concept of individual authorial genius as a necessary criterion of literary and cultural value. These attitudes are expressed in the various HOW TO READ theories, in which an interpretive grid is laid on top of a poem so that it produces certain kinds of meanings in relation to that grid. My focal point is somewhat different, in that I am not so much interested in how
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we read, as in the experience of understanding what happens to us as we read. And since I’m a writer, I take the further step of trying to account for what happens to us as we write. If that’s your point of entry, then what you are doing is trawling through your own unconscious processes for some glints and gleams that might prove useful to others when hauled up into the light. So when I say that the myth of mastery over language is insufficient and blinkered, I’m not doing so to undermine the difficulty of the art of poetry, and how the genius of individual poets negotiates that difficulty. What I am doing is hoping to find some inklings and intuitions that will suggest a more comprehensive model of subjectivity for the working artist. I want poetry to be as complex, as resistant to easy generalization, and as humanly capacious as Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (one of the obvious models for Merrill’s ‘‘The Changing Light at Sandover’’). The many levels of reality the novel occurs on are paralleled by how the ‘‘I’’ can be split into a number of voices, all working under the aegis of the Argus-eyed Marcel: the narrator who writes the work (or rather complains about not writing the work), the sufferer of the narrator’s tale who lives out what the narrator is nerving himself up to write, the social commentator of drawing rooms and bedrooms, the cultural historian of a bygone era. This many-eyed way of seeing many-leveled reality suggests, for poetry, the obvious analog of many different kinds of speech sorting together, with no self-consciousness about juxtaposing wildly differing lexicons and forms of diction. And this is precisely the procedure of John Ashbery. But Ashbery’s is not the name that seems to exemplify in the fullest way possible the potentialities of a multiply overlapping ‘‘I.’’ In fact, Ashbery’s multi-vocal, multi-perspectived way of writing a poem isn’t so much a form of provisionality as a settled stance. In other words, the formal inventiveness in Ashbery has crystallized beyond the point where the formal structure of the poem is being called into question. Despite the associative movement that Ashbery has perfected, his poems as formal structures are fairly static. A reader knows more or less the linguistic territory Ashbery will inhabit, and from that settled perspective there is capacious, often brilliant insight into the ‘‘solving emptiness’’ that underlies daily life. But despite the standard critical line that Ashbery is a poet of ceaseless transformations, what I feel in
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his poems is a fatalist at work. Ashbery’s ingenuity as a rhetorician doesn’t extend to wanting to ground the ‘‘I’’ in a unitary identity, so as to call that identity into question, to explode it, to deny its existence, to diffuse it into the quietly rebellious pronouns at work in Anne Bradstreet’s poem, or the myriad other operations you can perform. In other words, Ashbery assumes the multiplicity of ‘‘I,’’ but never does that enter into his poems as a process of ongoing revelation. Consequently, Ashbery represents what Elizabeth Bishop once called ‘‘the mind at rest,’’ as opposed to ‘‘the mind in motion.’’ Source: Tom Sleigh, ‘‘Self as Self-Impersonation in American Poetry,’’ in Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, Winter 2006, pp. 174–89.
William J. Scheick In the following excerpt, Scheick examines the aesthetic dislocations in Bradstreet’s verse. . . . Arguments particularly fail to account for the aesthetic dislocations in Bradstreet’s verse. These moments are too peculiar to be designated as the result of convention or tradition. Consider, for instance, the private and posthumously published poem ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666,’’ in which a number of critics (e.g., Stanford, ‘‘Dogmatist’’; Wess; Martin) have detected a tension between emotion and belief. This verse commences by recalling in detail many of the poet’s prized material possessions lost in the fire. During most of the poem Bradstreet intently revisualizes these lost objects, only to stop the enumeration abruptly, as if some part of her mind had suddenly realized the impropriety of such a recollection. Indeed, before this brusque halt, the implicit direction of her poem threatens to unleash her anger at the deity, who ultimately is responsible for her loss. She halts this dangerous veering of her verse by interjecting, ‘‘Adeiu, Adeiu, All’s Vanity’’ (237). The explicit sentiment of this line, safely ventriloquized in the language of Ecclesiastes 1:14, can readily be explained by arguments for the poet’s application of literary and heuristic conventions. Turning to scripture, as if to prayer, to thwart insurgent sentiment is culturally prescribed for a Puritan. What cannot be explained by these arguments is the aesthetic effect of this maneuver. To put the matter simply, something aesthetically disjunctive occurs in this short, stifled line when compared to what has preceded it in the poem. There is no ‘‘poetry’’
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in this formulaic line, no detail, which is another way of saying that its alleged instruction does not inhabit the emotion-laden, well-furnished house of the poem as the poem has been constructed up to this point. The line is devoid of the harmony of aesthetics and emotion that has been evident until this line appears. Instead of reflecting the poetic embodiment of literary and rhetorical conventions—say, the decorum of imperfection (Mignon) or the logogic site (Scheick, Design 2)—this particular line of verse records the sudden intrusion of an ideological convention from outside the aesthetic/domestic feelings, from outside the authorial presence, previously evident in the poem. As a site of logonomic conflict, the disruptive nature of this line may represent some theocratic ideal, but it also signals the flight of the poet from her potentially rebellious sentiment, as if the house of her emotion-full verse were also dangerously on fire. The poem, in fact, now disintegrates into a ‘‘heap’’ of routine religious questions. These questions are ‘‘narratively’’ designed, with or without the poet’s conscious consent, to suspend and contain the feelings featured in the first part of her poem. These concluding questions reveal a bifurcating tension in the poet and her verse, whether or not she is aware of it. They indicate, finally, just how difficult it is for Bradstreet, at an unconscious level at least, to renounce her secularly valued material possessions and her secularly defined identity expressed in a smoldering anger over temporal losses. ‘‘Upon My Son Samuel His Going to England, Novem. 6, 1657,’’ another private and posthumously published verse, likewise conveys ‘‘a hint of the struggle’’ between emotion and belief (White 309). It does so, narratively at least, by fissuring in a manner similar to ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House.’’ This later poem opens with Bradstreet’s indication of the ways she will praise God if her son safely returns to her after his perilous transatlantic voyage. After sixteen well-managed lines of this sentiment, the poet abruptly interjects an extremely terse introduction of the other possibility: ‘‘If otherwise I goe to Rest, / Thy Will bee done, for that is best.’’ Again the poet follows the cultural prescription to turn to scripture, this time the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2), to counter unsanctioned sentiment. And again there is an aesthetic price. The abbreviated and formulaic manner of these lines, akin to the sudden line of emotionally-vacant
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formula in ‘‘Upon the Burning of House,’’ intimate the flight of the poet from her poem, no longer a safe vessel of her emotion. Cast adrift, the poet’s abandoned feelings need mooring, and so in the next two concluding lines of her poem she asks the deity to ‘‘Perswade [her] heart’’ to accept divine will should this terrible event occur. The request for persuasion is also clearly an indication of her need to be persuaded. If the possible loss of her son is a thought Bradstreet must entertain, it is not a possibility that she can naturally accept, whatever the authority behind it. Foundering on this discord, the poem (over-freighted with both disclosed and undisclosed feelings) can find no satisfying theocratic port. The poem is, accordingly, abandoned as the poet withdraws her emotional and aesthetic presence from the compromised vessel of her verse. Such a performance in this poem and in ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House,’’ among many others, does not successfully conform to, or revise, or ironically engage any Renaissance literary tradition. If intended as hagiography in conformity with Reformed tradition, such a performance is likewise badly flawed because the idealized example of the second part is so pale, so flat, and so impoverished in aesthetic and emotional register when compared to the individualized fervid example of the first part. One readily wonders what normal reader would prefer this second voice to the first. Is it not altogether likely that the more human voice would continue to linger, like an elegiac ghost, in the memory of the reader even after this voice had been hagiographically banished at the end of these two severely bifurcated poems? The disruptive lines in ‘‘Upon the Burning of Our House’’ and ‘‘Upon My Son Samuel’’ indicate some deep conflict that cannot be perfectly negotiated by the application, revision, or ironic articulation of any literary convention or tradition available to the poet. The displacement of sincerity, sentiment, and aesthetics by arid formula results in the fracturing of both poems into two disjunctive pieces that the poet, much less the reader, cannot satisfactorily associate. Disclosure of feeling becomes non-disclosure, and this development signals a progressive atrophy of sincerity, sentiment, and artistry. How much of this disjunction was perceived by the poet remains uncertain. Although both poems exist in manuscript only in her son Simon’s hand, it is probably safe to assume
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that Bradstreet left them substantially as they are and so possibly did not quite see the effects of this conflict on her art. Today, for that matter, the fissures that result from the seismic activity of constrained resistance and declared conformity beneath the surface of Bradstreet’s art are visible to many readers. For our purposes, finally, two observations are important: not everything in Bradstreet’s verse can be identified as authorially deliberate, especially apropos tradition or convention; and occasionally her poems reveal unwittingly expressed instances of logonomic conflict. Source: William J. Scheick, ‘‘Logonomic Conflict in Anne Bradstreet’s ‘A Letter to Her Husband,’’’ in Essays in Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2, Fall 1994, pp. 166–84.
Montgomery P. Sellers In the following excerpt, Sellers discusses the historical significance of Bradstreet in American literature. [Though Anne Bradstreet] wrote some prose, it is as a poet only that she is known, and while she was not a great poet in any high sense of the word, in some of her work there is the true poetic spirit. The lack of surrounding literary conditions, and the strictness of her religion, as well as her remoteness from a great center of culture, shut her out from the inspiring influences of the great Elizabethan literature. Yet we find that in her verse which places her above the other versifiers of colonial times. The plan of the greater part of her writings is very simple, without any stress being laid upon the poetical quality of the verse. In the ‘‘Four Monarchies,’’‘‘Four Elements.’’ and the ‘‘Four Seasons,’’ each monarchy, element and season, as the case may be, comes up and says what it can for itself. There is a great deal in the way of natural history, the history of nations, and of medical and scientific knowledge, all in the style of the verse of the time, which was not very elevated, and had Anne Bradstreet written these only, her name would not now be held in so much honor. She has lines to match even the very worst of the other versifiers of her day. But when we strike such a passage as this: Sometime now past in the autumnal tide When Phobus wanted but one hour to bed, The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride, Were gilded o’er by his rich golden head— we come into the very atmosphere of the poetic spirit. We have heard nothing like it earlier
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in the history of American literature. What a contrast to the rude hymns of the ‘‘Bay Psalm Book,’’ Michael Wigglesworth’s ‘‘Day of Doom,’’ and all the memorial verses of that time! Written in the later years of Anne Bradstreet’s life, at her home near Andover, we see in them an expression of the true poetic feeling in the presence of nature. ‘‘Contemplations,’’ for it is the first four lines of that we have just quoted, is not only the very best of Anne Bradstreet’s poems, but is the true beginning of poetry in America. . . . ‘‘Contemplations’’ is the first true American poem. It is to Anne Bradstreet’s honor that amid all the rubbish of colonial verse she has given us a breath of the spirit of true poetry. And we should honor her, too, for her place in our history of literary culture, as the pioneer of American poets.
‘‘Key Findings and Statistics on Religion in America,’’ and ‘‘Appendix 2: Classification of Protestant Denominations,’’ in The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, http://religions.pewforum .org/reports, (accessed July 15, 2009).
Source: Montgomery P. Sellers, ‘‘New England in Colonial American Literature,’’ in New England Magazine, Vol. 28, No. 1, March 1903, pp. 100–107.
Rosenmeier, Rosamond, ‘‘The Wounds Upon Bathsheba: Anne Bradstreet’s Prophetic Art,’’ in Puritan Poets and Poetics: Seventeenth-Century American Poetry in Theory and Practice, edited by Peter White, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985, pp. 129–46.
Baer, William, ‘‘Appendix IV: The Formalist Revival,’’ in Writing Metrical Poetry: Contemporary Lessons for Mastering Traditional Forms, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006, pp. 236–40. ‘‘Biography,’’ in AnneBradsteet.com, http://www.anneb radstreet.com/Default.htm, (accessed on July 9, 2009). Bradstreet, Anne, ‘‘Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666,’’ in The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 292–93. Breitweiser, Mitchell, ‘‘Early American Antigone: Anne Bradstreet,’’ in National Melancholy: Mourning and Opportunity in Classic American Literature, Stanford University Press, 2007, pp. 57–83. Castillo, Susan Pe´rez, ‘‘Gender and Dissent in Colonial New England: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy,’’ in Revista da Faculdade de Letras Do Porto: Linguas e Literaturas, 2nd ser., Vol. 7, 1990, pp. 225–36. Egan, Jim, ‘‘The Insignificance of Experience,’’ in Authorizing Experience: Refigurations of the Body Politic in Seventeenth-Century New England Writing, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 82–94. Hensley, Jeannine, ed., ‘‘Introduction: Anne Bradstreet’s Wreath of Thyme,’’ in The Works of Anne Bradstreet, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. xxi–xxxv. Heyrman, Christine Leigh, ‘‘Religion, Women, and the Family in Early America,’’ in Divining America: Religion in American History, National Humanities Center, http:// nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/ erelwom.htm (accessed July 15, 2009).
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Piercy, Josephine K., ‘‘The Craftsman,’’ in Anne Bradstreet, Twayne Publishers, 1965, pp. 74–101. ‘‘Religion and the Founding of the American Republic: Crossing the Ocean to Keep the Faith,’’ in Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html, (accessed July 13, 2009). Rich, Adrienne, ‘‘Foreword: Anne Bradstreet and Her Poetry,’’ in The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. ix–xx.
———, ‘‘Introduction: The Critical Sources,’’ in Anne Bradstreet Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 1–13.
SOURCES
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Martin, Wendy, ‘‘Anne Bradstreet,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 24, American Colonial Writers, 1606–1734, edited by Emory Elliot, Gale Research, 1984, pp. 29–36.
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Showalter, Elaine, ‘‘A New Literature Springs Up in the New World,’’ in A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, pp. 1–14. ‘‘U.S. Federal Government,’’ in USA.gov, http://www.usa .gov/Agencies/federal.shtml, (accessed July 15, 2009).
FURTHER READING Archer, Richard, Fissures in the Rock, University Press of New England, 2001. Archer explores the social life and structures of New Englanders in the seventeenth century and includes discussions of family life, the economy and politics of New England communities, and religion. Fitzmaurice, James, Carol Barash, Eugene R. Cunnar, and Nancy A. Gutierrez, eds., Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England, University of Michigan Press, 1997. The editors of this collection provide an introduction to each of the female authors whose work is represented in the volume and also provide a general critical overview to women’s writing in England during the seventeenth century. The collection offers the student of Bradstreet’s works the opportunity to assess the writings of the poet’s English contemporaries, including the playwright Aphra Behn, the poet and essayist Margaret Cavendish, and the poets Anne Finch and Mary Wroth.
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Miller, Perry, ed., The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1982. Miller’s collection features journal entries, essays on history, religion, and philosophy, and on the poetry of American Puritans, providing a broad sampling of the thought and intellectual Puritan culture of the seventeenth century.
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Vaughn, Alden T., New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675, 3rd ed., University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Vaughn provides a detailed historical examination of the interactions between Puritan settlers and Native Americans during the seventeenth century and maintains that the early relations between these two groups were largely peaceful.
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What For Garrett Kaoru Hongo’s ‘‘What For’’ appeared in the 1982 collection Yellow Light. This poetry collection was Hongo’s first volume of poetry that was all his own. It reveals much about who Hongo is as a poet and what his unique perspective is. The book explores Hongo’s family and his past. It is a sort of collage of places he has lived, people he has known, stories he has heard, and who he understands himself to be. ‘‘What For’’ is one of the family poems in the collection. The speaker recalls his childhood self and the things he loved most. He mentions magic, religion, his grandparents, and his physical surroundings.
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But ‘‘What For’’ is primarily about the speaker’s father. The child anticipates his father’s return from a hard day of physical labor and enjoys the little time they spend together. As a child, the speaker wanted to heal his father and make him feel better physically. He imagines what it would be like to play catch among the papaya trees together, but he settles for the dream of bringing magic and healing to his father. The title points the reader to the speaker’s multiple statements about what he ‘‘lived for’’ when he was six years old. These were the things that were most important and exhilarating to him. ‘‘What For’’ is a poem of innocence and childhood longing. It also touches on some of the themes that run through Hongo’s work, such as family, generational ties, love of homeland, and joy in the everyday.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawaii, on May 30, 1951. While Hongo is considered an important voice among post-World War II Japanese Americans, he is more than just a niche poet. His work resonates with a wide and diverse audience of readers. Hongo’s style is considered postmodern, as it utilizes a variety of techniques and sources. Hongo draws from his personal experience, his studies of Japanese literature, the music he loves, and his family’s own history. He has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation; his 1988 book The River of Heaven was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. When Hongo was eight months old, his family moved to Oahu, and when he was six, they went to California. His high school had one-third Caucasian and Chicano students, one-third Japanese American students, and one-third African American students. This experience gave him a unique view of the challenges and opportunities involved in bringing different cultural backgrounds together. After graduating with honors from Pomona College in 1973, he spent a year in Japan on a Thomas J. Watson fellowship. He began graduate study in Japanese language and literature at the University of Michigan, but then, wanting to get back to the West Coast, he moved to Seattle, where there was a community of Asian American writers. While in Seattle, he held the position of poetin-residence for the Seattle Arts Commission and founded a theater group called The Asian Exclusion Act. In 1978, he brought his affinity for community to the collaborative poetry anthology Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99. Hongo completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine, in 1980. In 1982, two significant events took place— Yellow Light (the collection that includes ‘‘What For’’) was published, and Hongo married Cynthia Anne Thiessen, a violinist. The couple has two sons, Alexander (1984) and Hudson (1987). During the 1980s and early 1990s, Hongo taught at the University of Washington, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Missouri; he also served as the poetry editor for the Missouri Review. In 1988, his second collection of poetry, The River of Heaven was published. Critics note that this volume reflects Hongo’s
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desire to tap into ancestral wisdom and inspiration. In the second part of the volume, he writes about Los Angeles in a way that focuses the reader’s attention on the humanity of the people who live there. In 1995, Hongo and his wife separated; they divorced in 2000. As of 2009, he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon. Hongo’s third book, Volcano, was published in 1995. Here, the poet turns his attention to his connection to his father, his community, and the land. The motif running through the book is that of a journey, both literal and figurative. As a poet, Hongo has created a body of work that brings ethnic issues to light without being combative. He is largely optimistic, and his depiction of family, community, and culture are affectionate. In addition to developing his own writing, Hongo works to encourage other Asian American writers in their work, and in helping them get published. The sense of community and brotherhood that is evident in his poetry is also evident in his actions.
POEM TEXT At six I lived for spells: how a few Hawaiian words could call up the rain, could hymn like the sea in the long swirl of chambers curling in the nautilus of a shell, how Amida’s ballads of the Buddhaland in the drone of the priest’s liturgy could conjure money from the poor and give them nothing but mantras, the strange syllables that healed desire.
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I lived for stories about the war my grandfather told over hana cards, slapping them down on the mats with a sharp Japanese kiai. I lived for songs my grandmother sang stirring curry into a thick stew, weaving a calligraphy of Kannon’s love into grass mats and straw sandals. I lived for the red volcano dirt staining my toes, the salt residue of surf and sea wind in my hair, the arc of a flat stone skipping in the hollow trough of a wave.
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I lived a child’s world, waited for my father to drag himself home, dusted with blasts of sand, powdered rock, and the strange ash of raw cement, his deafness made worse by the clang
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of pneumatic drills, sore in his bones from the buckings of a jackhammer.
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He’d hand me a scarred lunchpail, let me unlace the hightop G.I. boots, call him the new name I’d invented that day in school, write it for him on his newspaper. He’d rub my face with hands that felt like gravel roads, tell me to move, go play, and then he’d walk to the laundry sink to scrub, rinse the dirt of his long day from a face brown and grained as koa wood.
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I wanted to take away the pain in his legs, the swelling in his joints, give him back his hearing, clear and rare as crystal chimes, the fins of glass that wrinkled and sparked the air with their sound.
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I wanted to heal the sores that work and war had sent to him, let him play catch in the backyard with me, tossing a tennis ball past papaya trees without the shoulders of pain shrugging back his arms.
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The speaker says he lived for the red dirt that stained his feet, and also for the salt from the sea and the wind that got in his hair. He recalls how he loved finding a smooth, flat stone he could skip in the trough of a wave. All of these things demonstrate the speaker’s deep love for the setting and place of his childhood, for the specific natural features that he loved and that became part of him.
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Stanza 1 The speaker of ‘‘What For’’ recalls the things he loved and looked forward to when he was six years old. In the first stanza, he describes his childhood sense of magic: a few Hawaiian words had the power to make it rain and sang through the nautilus like the sound of the sea. The Amida Buddha (the main Buddha in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism) had the power— through the liturgy of a priest—to satisfy the poor with words (mantras) while they offered what little money they had.
Stanzas 2 and 3 In the next two stanzas, the speaker talks about his grandparents. First, he remembers how he looked forward to the war stories his grandfather told while playing hana cards (Japanese cards). He remembers his grandfather playing cards and slapping his cards down with a short martial arts-type yell. Readers may notice that
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In the next stanza, the speaker’s attention turns to his grandmother. He remembers her in the kitchen, cooking a curried stew. As he lived for his grandfather’s stories (surely filled with excitement and intrigue), he also lived for his grandmother’s songs, which were likely soothing and carefree. The grandmother’s domestic life is underscored by the fact that while she cooks, she also weaves mats and sandals. The religious motif appears again here, as the design she is weaving is Japanese calligraphy of Kannon’s love. Kannon is a bodhisattva, a being whose compassion leads him or her to desire the state of spiritual enlightenment known as Buddhahood for all living beings.
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the speaker says he looked forward to his grandfather’s stories, but the description makes it evident that he looked forward at least as much just to being with his grandfather.
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I wanted to become a doctor of pure magic, to string a necklace of sweet words fragrant as pine needles and plumeria, fragrant as the bread my mother baked, place it like a lei of cowrie shells and pikake flowers around my father’s neck, and chant him a blessing, a sutra.
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In the next two stanzas, the speaker takes the reader into part of his daily routine as a child. He tells how he anticipated his father’s return from work, exhausted and dusty. The description of the father’s physical appearance and fatigue imply that the father works at a construction site or in a mine. It is hard work that is physically demanding. In fact, the father is already at least partially deaf, and the drills and jackhammers worsen the condition. The speaker continues his memories of his father at the end of a hard day of work into stanza 6. He handed his dented lunch box to the speaker, and then the boy unlaced the military boots his father had been working in all day. This interaction conveys how completely exhausted the father was; he sat down without even taking his lunch box to the kitchen, and his young son worked at the laces to remove his boots. Then the father heard the new name the boy had made up at school that day and allowed
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him to write the name on the newspaper. As tired as the father was, he had patience for his young son. When the father touched the child’s face, his hands felt like a gravel road. They were rough and calloused. Only then did the father tell the speaker to run along and play, so he could get up and set about scrubbing all the dirt from his face. The speaker describes his father’s face as resembling koa wood, a Hawaiian wood with a rippling grain.
creates an interesting dynamic that supports the innocence of the child’s perspective. In the last image, the speaker imagined himself putting a shell and flower lei on his father and speaking a blessing over him. The speaker refers to a sutra, which is a Buddhist scriptural saying.
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Innocence
The speaker takes the reader into his emotional life as a child in the next two stanzas. He saw his father’s pain and fatigue at working so hard, and he wanted to make the pain go away. Specifically, he wanted to make his legs and joints feel good again, and he wanted to be able to give his father back his hearing. He even describes what it might be like if his father could hear by referring to the delicate sound of crystal wind chimes. The eighth stanza continues describing how the child wanted to heal his father. He was aware that his father had wounds from his past and present—from the war and from work. The speaker imagines that if he could heal him, his father’s shoulders would not ache, and the two of them could play catch together with a tennis ball. Regardless of whether the scene is a memory or a fantasy, the son longs to play with his father the way other boys do. By referring to the papaya trees, Hongo brings in the tropical setting he loves. In both of these stanzas, the speaker wants to be the one to heal and provide relief for his father. His desire is not just for his father to be healthier—he himself wants to be the agent of that relief. It is an active rather than a passive desire.
Stanza 9 In the last stanza, the speaker connects his train of thought from the previous two stanzas back to the first stanza. In the first stanza, he spoke of magic and religion. Here, he applies those beliefs to the desire to heal his father. He says at the beginning that he wanted to be a doctor (a healer) of pure magic (effortless, innocent power). He reiterates the language motif of the first stanza by explaining that he wanted to make his father a necklace of words that smelled of trees, flowers, and freshly baked bread. Hongo uses synesthesia (mixing the senses so that one object is described with the sensory information of another; here the words have scent). This
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THEMES ‘‘What For’’ portrays the heart of a child. The speaker recalls the things he lived for as a child, and the things he wished desperately he could make happen. They are all innocent things, and Hongo makes it easy for the reader to connect with the innocence in the way he captures details. The poem opens with comments about magic and Hawaiian incantations against a background of Buddhism. The child believed that uttering the right words could make magic happen. There is nothing dark about this magic at all; it is the innocent fantasy of having the power to control one’s world. The example the child considers is making rain. Even when the child discusses religion, there is nothing jaded or zealous in it. In the first stanza, when he mentions the priests getting money from the poor and offering little in return, it does not come across as critical. In the final stanza, the child’s innocent grasp of religion becomes part of his love for his father. He wants to chant a blessing for his father as an act of love. The other things the child lives for evoke childhood innocence, too. He describes his grandparents, busy doing things that grandparents do. The grandfather tells war stories and plays cards, and the grandmother sings while she cooks and weaves. Hongo captures a sense of nostalgia in these images, as if to take the reader back to a simpler time in everyone’s life. The speaker lived for these simple interactions with his grandparents. The fifth stanza begins with the statement that he lived in a child’s world, waiting for his father to come home from work. The thing the speaker was most concerned with as a child (according to the poem) was his father’s sore, wounded body. His concern came from compassion and love for his father, and his wish that things were different. He enjoyed simply unlacing his father’s boots, but he secretly wished that his father was strong enough to play catch in the
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Read Marilyn Chin’s poem ‘‘How I Got that Name.’’ With respect to family, Chin has a very different point of view in this poem than Hongo’s speaker has in ‘‘What For.’’ How do you account for the differences? Consider ethnicity, gender, geography, and other elements that make writers unique. Create a chart to help you identify the similarities and differences. Mitali Perkins’ novel Monsoon Summer follows fifteen-year-old Jasmine as she explores her dual heritage by accompanying her mixed-race parents to her mother’s homeland of India. Jasmine grapples with finding her own identity, as all teens do, but the process if both complicated and deepened by two cultures that define her. Write a poem in the style of ‘‘What For’’ that reveals something about Jasmine’s relationship with her parents. Go back and read ‘‘What For’’ again, marking all descriptions of the physical setting and landscape. How clear a picture does Hongo create for the reader? Why do you think he chose these particular features for the poem? Look for three or four paintings or photographs that depict this setting, and
backyard without pain. This is a telling desire of a child’s heart; he wants more from his relationship with his father. When he was a child, this desire manifested itself in a dream of playing catch. Since the speaker is writing in the past tense, the reader can assume that the speaker’s desires have gotten more complicated and heavy over the years, but he still remembers vividly the innocent desires of his heart as a child.
Father-Child Relationships Although the speaker writes about his grandparents and the natural setting of his childhood, the poem is really about the little boy and his father. The first four stanzas begin with simple statements
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create a PowerPoint presentation using the images and lines from the poem. You may choose a video-editing program, a photoediting program, or anything else that suits your vision for the project.
How well do you know your grandparents? Using the basic structure of the second and third stanzas of the poem, write about your own grandparents in a way that reflects your own perspective and experiences.
The speaker recalls wishing he had the power to heal his father’s injured body. When you were a child, what was something you wished you could transform in some way? Write a diary entry from your perspective as a child, describing your desire to change something. Take your time so you can get back in touch with the thoughts and feelings of your childhood.
The poem has a number of Buddhist references. Read about Buddhism with special attention to the references in the poem. How does this enhance your understanding of the speaker and his family? Share what you learned by writing footnotes for the poem to illustrate the Buddhist references.
about what he lived for—spells, war stories, his grandmother’s songs, and the red dirt in his community. But in the fifth stanza, he makes a broader statement that he lived in a child’s world, and then he tells the reader that he waited every day for his father to drag himself home from work. This is the thing the little boy looked forward to most, and it did not matter that his father was tired and dirty. It was not that he wanted his father to do much of anything; he just wanted to see him and be around him. The little boy is glad to take the lunch box and put it away, and then to unlace the military boots his father wore to work. This is not exciting stuff, but it was what the speaker most looked forward to every day.
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Seashell (Image copyright Geanina Bechea, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
The speaker reveals that his deepest desire as a child was to be able to take all the pain, soreness, and deafness away from his father. He wanted to see his father at his strongest and healthiest for two reasons. First, he did not like seeing his dad suffer. Even though he was just a child, he could see that his father dragged himself home and was dirty and sore from the heavy work he did all day. Second, he wanted to be able to play with his father. He imagines what it would be like to play catch carefree among the papaya trees, without his father hurting. Because of the son’s compassion for his father, the pain he knows his father suffers interferes with the son’s pleasure in the time they are spending together. Still, he feels no disappointment or resentment toward his father. Rather, he is unhappy with the situation. His love for his father gives him pity beyond his years. Because Hongo does not give the father’s side of the story, there is less to go on with regard to the father-son relationship. Hongo gives enough, however, to demonstrate clearly that the father deeply loves his family and has a special relationship with his young son. The father
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works a grueling job to take care of his family. He is wounded, scarred, sore, and deaf, but he gets up every morning and works a long, hard day so his family’s needs will be met. When he comes home from that job, he does not demand to be left alone. He humbly sits down and hands his son his beat-up lunch box and lets his son take off his boots. Then he indulges the little boy as he tells his dad made-up names, and he even allows the child to write on his newspaper. Before sending the little boy on his way, he rubs his little face. This is a tender moment, and one that reveals the heart of the father toward the son.
Family History By including the grandparents and the religious references, Hongo gives the poem an added generational dimension. As a child, the speaker loved his grandfather’s war stories, and he loved watching him play cards with such fervor. He also loved hearing his grandmother sing as she made stew and wove mats and sandals. These are very ordinary, routine things the speaker describes, which indicate that the little boy saw
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his grandparents regularly. They probably lived nearby, and the child saw his grandparents in their everyday lives. He loved them, and he loved the things they did. Three generations are portrayed in this poem, and Hongo is clear that there is a great deal of love across all three.
when he was a child, and these last stanzas are about what was not ideal at all. Again, Hongo uses anaphora to give these three stanzas presence and relationship to one another.
The fact that the grandmother is weaving a Buddhist image into her work suggests that religious devotion is important to her. That the child mentioned Buddhist elements in other stanzas, apart from the third stanza (the one about the grandmother), lets the reader know that religion has been passed from one generation to the next. It is something significant that the generations share, and an important area of teaching in this family.
Perhaps because setting and personal experience are so important to Hongo, this poem includes imagery throughout to bring the memory pictures to life. Hongo calls on all the senses in his imagery, which signifies that the speaker’ memories of his life when he was six are vivid. In the first stanza, we hear a hymn from a nautilus, ballads of a Buddha, the drone of a priest, and strange Hawaiian syllables. In the second stanza, the sounds of the grandfather playing cards include the slap of the cards and the martial arts yell he delivers as he plays. The third stanza brings the scent of curry stew simmering and the song the grandmother sings. In the fourth stanza, the surroundings are described in the red of the volcanic dirt, the salt and wind in the air, and the sight of a stone skipping through a wave. In the fifth stanza, the father is described in terms of his physical appearance after working on a construction site all day. The sound of the drills is expressed in the onomatopoetic clang, which is juxtaposed with the deafness of the speaker’s father. In the next stanza, the father’s hands are likened to gravel, a very descriptive portrayal of the touch. The father’s face is likened to koa wood, a Hawaiian wood with wavy grain. The use of simile to describe the father’s physical appearance is very effective. Onomatopoeia is used again in the seventh stanza, where the speaker remembers wishing he could heal his father’s deafness. The speaker considers crystal chimes, and the words Hongo chooses sound like a breeze going through them. He describes the ‘‘fins of glass that wrinkled and sparked the air,’’ creating the tinkling sound of the wind passing through crystal chimes.
STYLE Parallelism Hongo uses parallelism in several ways in ‘‘What For.’’ In the first stanza, the speaker says that when he was six, he lived for magic. He gives a few examples such as how saying certain Hawaiian words would bring rain or how a priest’s words would heal the desires of the poor. In the last stanza, Hongo returns to the idea of magic, but he personalizes it. At the end of the poem, the little boy no longer worries about the rain or the poor; he is only worried about his father. He is still the same child who lives for magic, but Hongo revisits the topic in a new way. This ties the poem together and also shows progress as the child has taken the idea of magic and folded it into his fantasy of healing his father. The other way Hongo utilizes repetition is by using anaphora (the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of two or more lines) to give the poem cohesion and structure. The first five stanzas begin with ‘‘I lived,’’ and they all form a unified section of the poem describing the various things this six-year-old lived for in his daily life. This consistency is a useful guide for the reader through the speaker’s recollections. These particular repeated words ensure that the reader understands the significance of the five things the speaker has chosen to share. The last three stanzas all begin with ‘‘I wanted to,’’ and these stanzas describe what the speaker wished he could change. The first part of the poem is about what he thought was ideal
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Imagery
The last two stanzas explore the child’s wish to heal his father. A carefree image of playing catch in the backyard reveals the heart of the child, and the imagined necklace for the father is full of sensory images (words, shells, flowers, and scents).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Yonsei Hongo is Yonsei, meaning he is fourth-generation Japanese American. Like other ethnic groups, Japanese Americans have made a place in American
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culture and society. The first-generation Japanese Americans held more closely to the traditions of Japan than have successive generations. For many Yonsei, identity is a difficult issue because they want to honor and identify with their Japanese roots but, like Hongo, they know that they are profoundly influenced by American life. In fact, since the 1960s, the percentage of marriages between Japanese and non-Japanese spouses has risen consistently. In many Yonsei households, being Japanese is only expressed in celebrating certain festivals, eating Japanese food, and perhaps giving children Japanese first names or middle names. While earlier generations spoke Japanese as a first language and English as a second, most Yonsei speak English as their first language. Some do not even learn Japanese. In Hawaii, where there is a larger Japanese population, more currentgeneration Japanese Americans learn Japanese. As is the case with most Asian cultures, Japanese Americans tend to prioritize education and emphasize it in their homes. The most common religions practiced in Japanese American homes are Buddhism, Shinto, and Christianity. In areas with a large Japanese American population, it is not uncommon for the major Buddhist festivals to become community events. For Japanese Americans who were in America during World War II, the subject of internment is still painful. Because America was at war with Japan, many Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to internment centers until the alleged danger was deemed neutralized. Entire families were forced into internment camps, and it is a chapter in American history that is difficult to face, especially for those who were impacted. Of course, Yonsei like Hongo were not affected by this event, as it took place in the time of their parents or other relatives. The degree to which the internment is part of their identity is very individual because the degree of discrimination felt by prior generations is less of an issue.
Buddhism Buddhism is practiced in many Japanese homes, and there are multiple references to it in Hongo’s ‘‘What For.’’ Buddhism is based on the teachings and sayings of Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). Buddha was born in what is now known as Nepal, and is considered a teacher who possessed divine knowledge and insight to share with the rest of the world so that others could understand the cycles of rebirth and escape from
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suffering. Buddha taught on the Indian subcontinent until his death in approximately 483 BCE . Although there are differences among types of Buddhism, the basic beliefs remain consistent. Buddha teaches the concepts of rebirth and reincarnation. The concept is not about an individual eternal soul, but rather about the process of rebirth itself moving toward perfection. Once a being achieves a high level of maturity and selflessness, he or she attains nirvana, a state of perfect peace and freedom from suffering. This is the salvation taught by Buddhism, and many of the practices of devotees are designed to support the individual on his or her path to nirvana. Among these are meditation, moral living, exercise for the mind and body, participating in ceremonies, and invoking bodhisattvas (such as Kannon in Hongo’s poem). Bodhisattvas are beings that are wise, enlightened, and so compassionate for mankind that they wish for all to attain Buddhahood. While not exactly parallel, they are similar to the saints to whom Catholics pray. The cycle of rebirth and suffering is moved by the energy of karma, which refers to the actions a person takes and his intentions behind them. A person’s actions produce positive or negative consequences that appear in the current or a future life. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism address the subject of earthly suffering. The Truths teach that life leads to suffering; there is a cause of suffering, and it is rooted in self-centeredness; there is an end to suffering in letting go of desire and replacing it with enlightenment; and to attain enlightenment, one must follow the Eightfold Path set forth by Buddha. The components of the Eightfold Path fall into three categories: prajna, which is for enlightenment (proper understanding of the Four Noble Truths and seeing life as it really is, wise thinking, and renunciation of earthly things); sila, which is for morality (proper use of one’s speech, proper use of one’s actions through adherence to the Five Precepts, taking care of one’s own livelihood without harming anyone else); and samadhi, which is for meditation (good thoughts and intentions, self-awareness, practicing meditation to arrive at higher states of consciousness). Similar to the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, Buddhism has the Five Precepts, which require people to abstain from killing, stealing, lying, misusing sexual activity, or partaking of alcohol. There are additional precepts for Buddhist monks.
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1980s: In 1982, more than 533,000 people obtain legal permanent resident status. Immigration rates during the 1980s come close to those of the turn of the twentieth century. All told, more than six million people immigrate to the United States during the 1980s, most of them young and pursuing the American dream. Today: In 2008, more than 1.1 million people are granted legal permanent resident status. The topic of immigration is hotly debated as a recession strains the economy and the issue of illegal immigration has no clear solution.
1980s: In 1980, Congress establishes the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The purpose is to determine the impact on those interned during World War II (who were primarily Japanese Americans), and also to reexamine the relocation of
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Hongo’s first volume of poetry, Yellow Light, was published to critical acclaim, marking the author almost instantly as an important contributor to Asian American literature. In MELUS, Mary Slowik discusses the work of Hongo and three other poets at length. Of Hongo, she notes that he strives to connect with his heritage, but in America ‘‘the heritage is fragmented, broken, silenced.’’ She adds, If Hongo wants to reroot Asian culture in America, he first must discover the missing American story. His growing awareness of the suppressed American history leads him to angry outburst against both his Japanese family and the Anglo culture that has so injured them.
Slowik sees an agenda for his people in Hongo’s work as a poet. She writes, ‘‘Hongo also aspires to be a priest for his generation and those before him, a task which complicates and
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Alaskan Aleuts. The commission works on this project for three years. Today: The commission found that there was no justification for interning Japanese Americans during the war, and a formal apology has been issued, along with reparations. In the twenty-first century, sentiment is largely on the side of the Japanese Americans, and people criticize the dishonorable treatment they endured.
1980s: As of 1982, only one winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is Japanese, Yasunari Kawabata, in 1968. Today: As of 2008, two winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature are Japanese, Yasunari Kawabata in 1968 and Kenzaburo Oe in 1994.
historicizes the voice in his poems.’’ Similarly, George Uba in the Journal of Ethnic Studies notes that Yellow Light ‘‘grapples with . . . the problem of an ethnic group whose own identity remains ill-defined.’’ He sees Hongo striking a balance between individual experience and cultural identity, summed up as ‘‘the quest for a personal identity and the desire to build and retrieve a collective identity by sifting through the past.’’ According to Uba, Hongo is interested in neither the Japanese experience nor the American experience, but the unique experience of Japanese people in America. He concludes, Hongo applies wit, intelligence, and craftsmanship to his serious theme as few others have been able to do. His book is certain to gain a privileged station in Asian American literature courses, as well as to fuel the continuing controversy over enlarging the American literary canon.
Diane Wakoski gives an enthusiastic review of Yellow Light for the American Book Review. She deems the volume ‘‘one of the most exciting
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Father and son fishing (Ó 2009 / Jupiter Images)
books of poems I have read in recent years,’’ describing Hongo’s language as ‘‘sensuous’’ and his accomplishment as ‘‘astonishing.’’
CRITICISM Jennifer Bussey Bussey is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, she comments on how Garrett Hongo’s ‘‘What For’’ gives insight into what matters most to the Hawaiian-born Japanese American poet. After one collaboration, two volumes of poetry, and a memoir, Garrett Hongo is an established voice in Asian American literature. His postmodern style variously utilizes different techniques, voices, sources, and forms. Hongo is more concerned with exploring and voicing his personal experience and the collective experience of Japanese Americans than he is with adhering closely to a regimented style of writing. He is especially concerned with the experience of non-first-generation Japanese Americans, like himself. He is Yonsei, which is fourth generation,
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and thus his identity is different from that of his grandparents. To Hongo and others in his situation, the issue of identity is not simple. Through Hongo’s poetry, he works through the nuances of this—and many other—aspects of his experience. In ‘‘What For,’’ a poem that appeared in his first volume of poetry, the 1982 Yellow Light, the speaker goes back into his childhood memories to recall what was most important and exciting to him when he was six years old. It is a moving and sensitive piece that goes much deeper than nostalgia. Based on the rest of Hongo’s canon of work and his vision as a poet, it is likely that this poem reveals what is really important to Hongo himself in terms of his Japanese and Hawaiian roots. Over the course of the poem’s nine stanzas, the speaker brings up magic, religion, language, nature, grandparents, and his father. In the first and last stanzas, he tells that he lived for magic. He says that a few Hawaiian words could bring rain or make music in a nautilus. He says that a priest’s Buddhist liturgy has the power to ‘‘conjure’’ money from the poor but still leave them satisfied by his words. In the last stanza, the speaker returns to this idea of magic, which he
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
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‘WHAT FOR’ IS A POEM WITH EMOTION, LONGING, AND REMEMBRANCE, BUT LIKE MOST OF HONGO’S POETRY, IT WORKS TOWARD FOCUSING THE POET’S IDENTITY. HE VISITS HAWAIIAN AND
Culture Shock and Japanese-American Relations: Historical Essays (2007), by Sadao Asada, takes a look at the history of relations between Japan and the United States, including such hot topics as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the atomic bomb. Asada examines what relations are like today, and how each culture views the other. Marilyn Chin’s 2002 poetry collection Rhapsody in Plain Yellow expresses the poet’s concerns about identity and heritage with her modern sensibility. Her poems touch on traditional themes but discuss them in modern contexts and with modern subjects with which readers can more readily identify.
Edited by Sari Grossman and Joan Brodsky Schur, In a New Land: An Anthology of Immigrant Literature (2007) compiles various genres of literature from writers of divergent ethnic backgrounds. Their works reflect the difficulties of being part of two or more cultures, and the promise of a new beginning.
Hongo’s The River of Heaven (1988) was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Scholars and admirers of Hongo’s poetry find it a fascinating work in which the poet deepens his vision of the places he has been, the people he has known, and stories he has heard. Graham Salisbury’s novel Under the Blood-Red Sun (2005) tells the story of a hard-working Japanese family living in Hawaii at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thirteen-year-old Tomi faces the traumas of war, racism, family struggle, and self-reflection in this historical novel. Dale Ann Sato’s Japanese Americans of the South Bay (2009) relates the history of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles County. Sato explains why they settled in this area, how they established their own communities, and the struggles of the generations that came after them as they set about preserving Japanese traditions while embracing American culture.
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JAPANESE CULTURES IN THIS POEM, PICKING UP CERTAIN ELEMENTS AS IMPORTANT AND SETTING OTHERS ASIDE.’’
interweaves with religious elements. He wants to use pure magic to heal his father and then chant a sutra to bless him. A sutra is a saying or discourse attributed to Buddha. Hongo chooses to begin and end the poem with the idea of magic and religion, and it is clear that what this represents to the child is simply power. Being a child can be a powerless feeling, so the child in the poem wants to draw some power and a sense of control (over the rain, or over his father’s health) by mastering magic. That he includes Buddhism in this demonstrates that the child has not internalized his faith, but regards it as an external thing. His grandmother weaves calligraphy about Kannon, a bodhisattva, into her work. A bodhisattva is a being who has so much love and compassion that he or she strives for enlightenment that will benefit others. This tells the reader that Buddhism is part of this family’s identity, and the child is probably being educated in it. Perhaps because of the child’s young age, however, he has categorized it in a different way. It is important to remember that this poem is the recollection of a grown man. He necessarily sees things through the lenses of his memory and his experiences since the time of that memory. There is nothing in his words or tone that suggest he still believes in magic, and the tenderness he brings to other parts of the poem are absent in his passing references to religion. He understands that to others, faith is important and comforting. The desires of the poor he mentions in the first stanza are healed, and his grandmother clearly has a personal connection to her beliefs. But the speaker does not reveal any similar feelings. This suggests that, of all the things
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about his Japanese heritage that are meaningful to him, Buddhist devotion is not one of them. In the fourth stanza, the speaker recalls how he lived for the unique elements of his natural surroundings. He loved the red volcanic dirt that stained his skin, and he loved the salt from the sea that stuck to his hair. From the way he describes these things, it is clear that he loved having the place physically become part of him. They were not annoyances in the least. He loved being physically changed by being out in nature. This indicates the importance of place and homeland to Hongo, and the ways he interacts with it. The boy in the poem literally wants his homeland all over him. The speaker remembers fondly what he loved about his grandparents. The details demonstrate that he watched them closely and appreciated their quirks. He remembers how he lived for the war stories his grandfather told them while playing Japanese cards. He remembers that his grandfather played with gusto, slapping the cards down with a martial arts-style yell. His grandmother sang, and he lived for her songs. He remembers her cooking curried stew and weaving grass into mats and sandals. These details enable the reader to connect with the speaker’s love for his family. In the descriptions of his grandparents, he includes a Japanese card game and ethnic food, but these elements are only meant to give depth to the portrayals of his grandparents. Like the religious references, these are not things that seem particularly close to his own heart, even though they are aspects of his heritage. The real thrust of this poem is the young son’s love for his father. He lives for his father coming home, dirty and tired from a long, hard day of work. The son loves the brief time he spends with his father, and he wishes he could heal the aches and the pain that are the result of the harshness of his life. These are not passing wishes, but a dream with a lot of emotion and detail. They are the heart of the poem and reveal much about the son’s character at such a young age. The detail with which he describes the pain can only be coming from the adult speaker, remembering anew his father’s aches and pains. A child would not possess that level of sensitivity and insight, although the child knew enough to know he wanted to make it better. And the son knew enough to know he really wanted his father to be able to play catch with him like any typical
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father and son. But the son—as a six-year-old or as an adult—is not resentful toward his father or the hard life that made him the way he was. The same love seems to have been consistent throughout the speaker’s life. In the discussion of the grandparents and of the father, the speaker makes it very clear that family is the single most important thing to him. Given the scope of Hongo’s work beyond this poem, it is fair to extrapolate that Hongo felt the same way about his family. His interest in his family encompasses the generations before him, his own identity as a Japanese American born in Hawaii, and the generation after him that includes his two sons. This is an important element in Japanese culture, and that sense of family loyalty seems to be embraced by Hongo, even if it is Westernized by the addition of deep, heartfelt emotion. One other aspect of the poem speaks very loudly as being important to the speaker and certainly to Hongo, and that is the presence and power of language. In his comments about magic and religion, the speaker locates the power in the words. A few Hawaiian words (not dances or music or ceremonies) create rain, and a Buddhist ballad spoken to the poor heals the desires of their hearts. The speaker loves his grandfather’ stories, and his grandmother’s songs—all words. The interaction with the father is almost silent, save for the son’s sharing a made-up name from school, and the silence is a haunting reminder that the father’s deafness is a cruel irony to a son who places so much importance on words. But as the poem gains momentum toward its close, the speaker describes wanting to make the father a necklace of what? Of ‘‘sweet words.’’ And the words capture the other senses because they have scent, which the father can experience. In the final line of the poem, the son remembers wanting to speak a blessing to his father. No longer wanting to invoke magic to make something exciting happen, he merely wants to express love to his father in a spoken blessing. ‘‘What For’’ is a poem with emotion, longing, and remembrance, but like most of Hongo’s poetry, it works toward focusing the poet’s identity. He visits Hawaiian and Japanese cultures in this poem, picking up certain elements as important and setting others aside. Although the speaker refers to Buddhism, Japanese games, and ethnic food, these are background to what
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POETRY IS ANOTHER JUDGMENT. AND SPEECH WITH DEVOTION TO PRIVATE MOMENTS OF EMOTION ALSO HAS A PLACE IN POETRY AS WELL AS SPEECH ABOUT UNAUTHORIZED HISTORY.’’
American history; I believe in what we’ve witnessed as the travesties in American history.
Dirty feet (Image copyright Humberto Ortega, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
really matters to Hongo’s speaker. And what really matters is generational ties, immediate family, and words. Source: Jennifer A. Bussey, Critical Essay on ‘‘What For,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Alice Evans In the following interview with Evans, Hongo discusses the craft of writing and the role of his family history in his poetry. [Alice Evans]: At a craft workshop recently, you talked about how important it is for the individual to act as a witness to history. Witnessing appears to be a primary directive in your work. How would you describe the poet’s role as historian, from both a broad view and a personal one? [Garrett Hongo]: As poets we need to portray the events of the world from our own point of view. We need to be attached to the events of the world in our own lives. Sometimes history passes us by and we don’t know it. I believe that poets must speak as witnesses to historical events. I don’t believe in [the official version of]
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I try to be faithful to the history of Japanese in America and write from it, and I’ve made it my responsibility to know everything that I can about it. It’s like Czeslaw Milosz says about Lithuania: ‘‘If there is no singer there is no history.’’ That’s how I go into the world: if I don’t write it, it’s not going to get written, and I don’t want people to stop that. I see that the person in my way who is causing me difficulty is also repressing the expression of the history of my people. I have a lot of pride. It comes from my people, my whole family. I had a very proud grandfather and grandmother whose pride was taken away because of World War II. You don’t forget it. Tell me about your own history. What were the forces that produced an acclaimed poet? How did the doors open for you? The reason I’m doing anything at all is because I’m an individual who is part of a corrective process in American history. I got educated because Governor Pat Brown funded a program for poor kids to study at the best universities in California. So I was given an academic scholarship to go to a very elite school, Pomona College. Because this education came from a political circumstance of opportunity and empowerment, it’s not hard for me to believe the thing that I believe. And I never give a damn about making it. You say you don’t give a . . . about making it, but you have made it. You’ve been very honored as a poet. What has that meant for you? It’s not a question of making it. It’s a question of standing up and honoring a past which I feel was dishonored. It’s on those principles that I carry myself forward.
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Yes, I’ve been honored, and I’m happy for that, for complicated reasons, I suppose. One of the nice things about that is it gives me more opportunity to address my subjects. Honors, insofar as that’s concerned, are very good. They endorse my projects and they give me the opportunity to address my subjects. They also are great medallions and great weapons in the fight to get that story told. I wish my grandfather had been honored, but this country did not do that to him, so I do it. Your poetry shows great depth of feeling, a characteristic I find unusual for a man. Maybe it’s a human characteristic. Most males are not human any more. I like that joke in the book Little Big Man, where the Cheyenne call themselves human beings and they call the other people ghosts—or the ‘‘white man.’’ Maybe male culture—I don’t want to offend anybody—but maybe people have forgotten how to be human beings. My grandfather was not this way, my father was not this way, Hawaiians are not this way. We have a lot of aloha—spirit, love, trust. When I moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles there was no aloha in Los Angeles. Man, there was a lot of brutality. But it’s good that I learned about that too, because you have to ward things off. Tenderness is a very underrated emotion. It’s also much attacked and maligned. So I’ve made it my job to learn a vicious kind of tenderness. Could you elaborate? James Wright’s tenderness I believe in. You know the poem, ‘‘To a Blossoming Pear Tree’’— ‘‘the dark blood in my flesh drags me down with my brother’’—that’s the kind of tenderness I believe in. I love you because I know we’re both going to die. I love you because everyone else is trying to beat us up. ‘‘Flayed without hope, I held the man for nothing in my arms.’’ A lot of people were excited about having you come to teach at the University of Oregon. What kind of teacher are you? What do you emphasize and what ticks you off? The kinds of things I might criticize a student for are a lack of commitment, a lack of concern for the reader, obscurity. I like things to be reasonably clear. I don’t go in for a lot of verbal pyrotechnics, but there’s always a Gerard Manley Hopkins out there, or a Hart Crane, or a Charles Wright. You’ve got to worship them.
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I care a lot about self-knowledge, knowing what you’re going to write about, knowing what you sing, knowing what you like to sing about, and helping the students connect with that. I guess I’m still a Confucian. I believe that people are basically good, not basically bad. So I believe that if they learn to trust their nature, something good will emerge out of it, even if it’s an angry nature. You know, people aren’t angry for no reason, they’re angry for a reason usually. And poetry is a loving craft, so even angry poems are in the service of some love. You talked at the craft workshop about poetry being treated as an elite practice. You mentioned being turned off by literary aloofness, obscurity, a system of privileged meaning accessible only to those initiated into that system. What kind of emphasis do you put on technique? Technique can show a commitment, technique can show energy. Technique shows you’ve invested. Also candor shows you’ve invested, you’ve invested in trust. The thing I work to build first in the workshop is trust. Not only that the students trust me, but that they trust each other, because the thing that kills expression and creativity is a lack of trust, an environment of hostility. And the workshop’s primary function to me is to give people a sense of a sympathetic yet creatively critical audience. That’s the main job. I’ve been in some very destructive workshop situations. Well, it’s easy to be destructive—to be critical and careless. It’s harder to be critical and supportive. There are not too many people who have shown the ability to do that in our history. Some of my heroes are people who have been great teachers—Bruce Lee, Theodore Roethke, Philip Levine. When I interviewed for this job, and people asked me why I wanted to do this, I said: because this is a self-assignment for me. I believe in the craft, I believe in the profession, I believe in the cause, and in my own mind I’m not going to be significant in terms of my people unless my work is shown to be valuable, in that it helps better the world. In the martial arts, as in anything, the final requirement of someone in the profession—in the art—is that they start a school that lives beyond their own life, that they help people find what is valuable in the art, that they inspire people not only to do well but to try to do well for others. And that’s what’s left for
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me to do yet. That’s the reason I came here. It was an opportunity for me to test and extend myself, but also to contribute. We have to increase the opportunity for people to have free voice, free expression, and that’s what I hope for here. Poetry—creative writing—is free speech. That’s why Jesse Helms wants to shut us down. There are very strong forces in play right now that want to shut down the National Endowment for the Arts, because the understanding is that it is a forum for free speech in America. It really is. I have a friend who’s a legal scholar, in what they call critical legal studies. She did an article on poetry—particularly women’s poetry—as an alternate system of jurisprudence to the law, and I think that’s the reason why people are so upset by it. That’s why poetry is so threatening and why it’s practiced by so many people who are outside of economic and political power. Because it’s our system of jurisprudence. Poetry is another judgment. And speech with devotion to private moments of emotion also has a place in poetry as well as speech about unauthorized history. After all, that’s what the Old Testament was about. And the New Testament. They’re unauthorized histories. Donald Barthelme said, ‘‘Do you think the Bible would have been written if people thought they were writing the Bible?’’ That’s pretty good, I’ve got to say. Barthelme inspired me a lot, and his confidence that this could be done helped me. . . . Let’s talk a little about your writing habits now. Are you a disciplined writer, do you write every day? I’m an actor as a writer. I prepare the character, you know, like Stanislavsky. So the idea of the character dictates the poem? Not really, no. The gut, the feeling, the emotional and narrative core of the book does. I was talking to Barry Lopez and asked him how it was to work with a certain editor. He said ‘‘I don’t know yet, I haven’t shown her anything.’’ He’s been working on this book for two and a half years—three years almost—and said, ‘‘I don’t know, I don’t know this book very well yet.’’ I said ‘‘huh?’’ and he kept talking: ‘‘the way
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I do things, I never show an editor anything until I get at least a complete draft done, and then I’ll go over it line by line.’’ He’s still kind of putting the book together and doesn’t know what kind of a book it is, what the personality of it is, what’s going to go in it. He lives the book; he’s preparing it. That’s the way I do it too, but I don’t know what I’m doing. He knows what he’s doing, For him it’s a method. For me it’s floundering. It was great to hear him tell me that because when I write my book of poems I kind of run into the poetry, I run into the book. Like, I was writing and it didn’t really come together, but I just kept living with this feeling of trying to capture the love, the aloha [a word of welcome], the commitment to democracy my father had, because I knew I didn’t have what he had. So that was my koan [a prayer of meditation], that was my problem with The River of Heaven. And once I got it, once I felt ‘‘in the feeling,’’ then the poems started to come, one by one, then more, then more and more and more and more. Every time I extended myself I realized something new, and I pushed myself to the next level; the last poem I wrote for the book was ‘‘The Pier,’’ a long poem at the end of The River of Heaven. It’s a democratic statement. My father had those beliefs. He’s a Hawaiian Democrat. He was active politically? Every Hawaiian is active politically. You know, equal rights, enfranchisement for all peoples, and Go For Broke. And that’s kind of, like, you talk that way, you think that way on the mainland—especially in Orange County at the ‘‘University of Apartheid’’—you’re ostracized, you’re looked upon as some kind of dirty, rotten ethnic. So I wanted to do something that might blossom, because they’re trying to take that belief away from me. It’s like a religion. You kill the religion first and it’s easy to have the people die. I wanted to bring the religion back in me and there were certain fathers behind it also, not just my own flesh fathers, but William Butler Yeats and his great poem, ‘‘Among Schoolchildren,’’ and William Wordsworth, in ‘‘The Immortality Ode.’’ ‘‘Among Schoolchildren’’ is a model behind ‘‘The Pier.’’ Instead of schoolchildren it’s Cambodians and Vietnamese that I
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see. Those two poems are ghost poems behind ‘‘The Pier.’’ So I took on as much as I could, I took on my father’s life and his democratic principles, and I wished to critique the oppressive ideology of white racism and to invoke the great fathers of mystic revelation and poetic power, William Butler Yeats and William Wordsworth—and I tried to put it together in ‘‘The Pier.’’ My working method is to let the meditation grow. I guess it’s kind of Eastern, but it’s also like Wordsworth. He walked all over the Wye Valley, meditating, ruminating, and he’d come back and then write the poem about it after his long walks. I don’t have a craftsman-like, disciplined daily writing method. The River of Heaven came together at the MacDowell Colony in six weeks, I read somewhere. It wasn’t only those six weeks, though they were crucial. MacDowell helped a lot and going to Hawaii helped a lot. Just before I was at MacDowell I was in Hawaii with my friend Edward Hirsch. I was running around, I was showing Hawaii to this person, who wanted to know me and my history and he appreciated it so much. It inspired me, his love for my people’s way, it inspired me to share more of my heart through poetry with the rest of the world. Tell me about the book you’re working on now, Volcano Journal. It’s a book of retreat and return, meditation on going home to a home I never knew, which is this volcano. And coming back to it, to the history of my family, coming back to that culture, the biology, the biota [the animal and plant life of a particular region considered as a total ecological entity], the rainforest, the volcano itself. It’s nonfiction, not like John McPhee, more like Thoreau. When you read from that book the other night, you mentioned that you needed to experiment with form. Could you talk about that? In writing this book, the poetic form needed to expand for me. What I found to be the form was the Japanese nikki. It’s a travel diary, poetic prose. We have examples in American literature in Moby Dick and Walden. In that vein I write this book. You were eight months old when your family left Volcano. What took you back there?
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I was invited, when I was about 31, to give a couple of readings in the islands and was invited to give a reading in Volcano, where they have an art center. What happened for you there? I knew that that was it. I knew I had to go back. I knew I wasn’t finished with it. I knew there was something. And I was true to it. I was true to that little insinuation, and it’s made all the difference in my heart. It’s made all the difference in the soul of my family. My boys love it, my wife, everything. So I didn’t ignore my calling. It seems that in Volcano you found yourself as a writer. That’s right. In geography and geology, you know, when lava comes out of the earth it’s not magnetized, and the way they can map continental drift is by tracing the magnetic fields, because after the lava is emitted and solidifies, then it’s magnetized, and it’s magnetized according to our orientation to magnetic north. So there’s something to that, the first time you come into the world. Many people are magnetized. You get your little stratigraphy, that kind of thing. I feel perfect there, I can’t tell you. It’s always a good day in Volcano. I have a friend, Native American poet Ray Young Bear. When I met him I was nothing, I was completely shiftless. He had a feeling for his ancestors, he had a feeling for his tribe and his people, he knew where he stood, he walked with the grandfathers. I took that as a criticism of my own psyche and soul. When we were eighteen, I didn’t have that. When I was eighteen, I was like the ‘‘stolen child.’’ But I have that now. I walk with my grandfathers and have absolutely complete confidence. I’m their grandson. It took me a lot longer than Ray, but I got there. In Yellow Light, you write about returning to Japan to find your family’s name. Are you talking about your natal family? Everybody. I’m talking about those that the literature has forgotten, those that the culture has forgotten. It’s important to me that we be remembered, that there be a literature for us, that we be sung about, that there be songs for the lives that my people have lived. That’s why the poetry of Philip Levine inspired me so early—‘‘Vivas for those who have failed,’’ the names of the lost.
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I said in an interview somewhere, sometime, part of the motivation behind my first book was to recuperate or reinscribe our name in the registry, the list of names in Japan, the list of names in Hawaii.
I could probably get an advance, but I don’t know if I could live on it. I’m still learning to be a prose writer and still learning what kind of a prose writer I am. I’m enjoying the experience, finally.
So not literally Hongo, but the lost names of all your people.
I’d like to get back to your writing question. I like to write seven pages every day except weekends, which I like to spend with my family.
There’s a serious pun in that, because my name means homeland. Hongo means homeland. I was a little confused because there was some mention of changing names, or taking on a new name. A lot of Japanese did that. Like people coming through Ellis Island, they just changed their names. Tell me about the use of oral history in your poetry. You write very eloquently about people not directly connected to you. You write the history of the tribe and you sing from sources. I used the Oral History Project of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Hawaii, God bless them. We need to be liberated, the love of oral history needs to be liberated, the love of our people needs to be liberated. We’re a colonized place, culturally colonized. This is our pride, this is our history, this is our identity. We’re a colonial people. We’re like the blacks in southern culture. I mean, politically we’re a canceled culture. We’re like the copper miners in Chile—there’s no difference. We’re like the students in Tiananmen. So you’re trying to reawaken. . . . I’m not trying, I have to. It’s a compulsion with me. I don’t have a choice. If I’m going to be what my grandfather was, I have to do it this way. For me to be a person in my eyes, this is what I have to be. Your mother’s father is the one who was taken away? That’s right. It’s like Indians say: you have ghosts, you have your aumakua. I have my aumakua, I have my guardian spirits. Tell me more about your work habits. When you’re in Eugene, are you able to write? No—impossible. That’s what I thought. You need the open time that a Guggenheim provides; you need NEA [fellowships]. If you wanted to now, could you earn your living solely as a writer?
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Sometimes I just get a page. I just get a bad page. I get a lot of pages that are real lousy but I’ve started working on a problem, or a theme, a beat, narrative or emotional, and the next pages are really . . . I just trash it and I find my way into the subject. I’m enjoying myself, so I write between a page and seven pages a day, single-spaced. You work first thing in the morning? Pretty much. Your poetry is very songlike at times, it’s very lush. You’ve described your style as narrative, Whitmanesque. You relate oral history, you talk about your roots, both family personal and family historical, and it seems to me you go all the way back to the universe itself. Your work has lots of references to the universe. Thank you. I’ve looked down into the middle. You stand over a pond of lava boiling up, or you stand on the top of Mauna Kea and you look up at a star, it’s impossible to think anything else. Well, it’s a very expansive view. A lot of poetry is focused only on the personal these days, only on the wounds the person has suffered. Yours branches out into the universe. There are so many things to wither the soul, and poetry does the opposite. I won’t let my poetry wither my soul, poetry has to enhance it. I don’t believe in poetry as a discipline, or a narrow field, or an elite practice. I believe in poetry as empowerment. Singing for Power, you know, that great book by Ruth Underhill about the Papago Indian ceremonies. I mean, I like those ideas that poetry is like singing for power, trying to find, crying for your own vision. Every one of us finds it in our own way, if we’re worth anything. But one of the things I like about being a poet, is that I get to do that. I don’t always have it, but I get to do it every now and then. I like it. I feel privileged to be able to do this. I feel very grateful to be able to do it. At the same time I feel proud. I’ve sacrificed. I haven’t cared
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about cars, or career, or those kinds of things. I’ve been caring for the singing. I mean, I’ve had great teachers—like Bert Meyers, like Charles Wright—great, scrupulous, ethical, dedicated artists who have helped me feel the right way, who have confirmed my intuition and instincts and who fostered my loyalties. I needed those teachers to help me along, I did, I did. To help you find your song? Yeah, particularly my man, Charles Wright. What did he teach you? To believe in my poetry, to let my poetry lead me into my life, not the other way around. Who’s helped you the most with craft? Well, with the technique, I can help my own self. What I needed help with was to believe in my spirits and to confirm my impulses and to deepen them, and also to challenge me to be loyal to them. C. K. Williams was the most instrumental. I brought a poem into class, the one about the woman on the bus, ‘‘Stay With Me.’’ C. K. looked at me like this, he drilled me with his eyes. ‘‘This is the real thing,’’ he said. ‘‘If you can write like this, I don’t understand why you write all that other stuff.’’ He was working on ‘‘Tar,’’ a breakthrough poem for American literature. It’s no wonder how passionate he was. He said, ‘‘I don’t see why you waste your time, and what’s more, I don’t see why you’re wasting mine.’’ The next week I wrote ‘‘Yellow Light,’’ then ‘‘Off from Swing Shift.’’ All the poems in Yellow Light were written under C. K. Williams and Charles Wright. C. K. taught me to write from a grander state than the mundane, to take the big thing and put all of it in the poem, not to divide it off into short story or essay. He confirmed me in my devotion to writing my own thing. He pounded me on top of my head until I got mad and charged. He motivated me. If it weren’t for him I don’t know if I would have had the guts. I can’t slack off from that level of vision. Source: Alice Evans, ‘‘A Vicious Kind of Tenderness: An Interview with Garrett Hongo,’’ in Poet & Writers Magazine, Vol. 20, No. 5, September-October 1992, pp. 37–46.
George Uba In the following review, Uba asserts that the main concerns of Yellow Light are personal identity and use of the past to build a collective identity. A few years back a popular weekly newsmagazine ran an article on Japanese Americans,
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treating them as an American success story. The article was headlined—‘‘Outwhiting the Whites.’’ Garrett Kaoru Hongo’s book of poetry, Yellow Light, demolishes the onesidedness of such headlines and grapples with the underlying problem toward which they unintentionally point: the problem of an ethnic group whose own identity remains ill-defined. Not that Hongo merely trumpets the familiar tune of ethnic pride. Rather, he excels at balancing a passionate interest in ordinary working-class people performing ordinary activities, with a deep-felt concern over what they are often the unknowing victims of. In the title poem, ‘‘Yellow Light,’’ for instance, an unidentified Los Angeles woman returns with a load of groceries to her ‘‘neighborhood of Hawaiian apartments, / just starting to steam with cooking’’ but fails to observe the ‘‘war’’ being waged between the ‘‘dim squares’’ of kitchen light in the barrio and the ‘‘brilliant fluorescence’’ emanating from the wealthy Miracle Mile district. Neatly skirting both the sentimentality and the obvious partisanship that this scenario invites, Hongo concludes the poem without even a glimmer of awareness on the woman’s part of the class conflict to which she seems heir, but instead with a riveting, ambiguous image of the yellow moon, at once minatory and transfiguring, that devours ‘‘everything in sight.’’ In ‘‘Off from Swing Shift,’’ one of several fine poems written about his father, Hongo combines an incisive portrayal of a factory worker who, only within the safe confines of home, dares remove ‘‘the easy grin / saying he’s lucky as they come,’’ with a genuinely moving depiction of hope seasoned with despair, as the man, a Japanese American war veteran gradually growing deaf ‘‘from a shell / at Anzio,’’ listens for the late race results on the radio. The balance Hongo strikes between the individual’s private experience and the larger cultural matrix of which the individual constitutes a part refers the reader to the principal concerns of the book as a whole: the quest for a personal identity and the desire to build and retrieve a collective identity by sifting through the past. In his search for personal identity, Hongo not only jockeys back and forth through time but also through space, traveling from California to Japan and back again. In Japan he finds himself inescapably the outsider, reduced, at least at first, to writing ‘‘postcards’’ back home. But
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these ‘‘Postcards for Bert Meyers’’ are not filled with the banalities of the ordinary tourist; instead, they define both what has been lost and what has been retained in modern Japan’s headlong rush for technological advance. At one point the poet is the bemused foreigner caught in the literal crush of rush hour commuters, able to recover his equilibrium only at the moment when the train stops ‘‘And lets out a small puff / Full of tiny Japanese people’’ (‘‘Yamanote Sen’’). At another point he is a lone human figure magically transformed in an urban landscape itself transformed by a sudden rain: ‘‘All around me / the ten thousand things / of the universe go slack / in the day’s new lagoon / and I seep out of myself like / water from the soaked earth . . . ’’ (‘‘Alone in a Shower’’). Gradually, the poet achieves a harmony with that part of the Japanese past that remains alive to the mutual imagination of its descendants on both sides of the Pacific. Throughout the book, Hongo’s wit and humor leaven the more programmatic elements of his quest. In ‘‘Crusing 99,’’ even as he journeys toward the California town called Paradise, he playfully admits that he is inclined to allow his ‘‘mind to wander’’ and at one point even grumbles that the ‘‘Dodgers / haven’t made it to Vero Beach.’’ And in the marvelous, whacky tour de force, ‘‘Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic,’’ he savages the pretensions of foreigners by converting their interest in exotic foods into a weapon turned back upon them. While Hongo’s personal quest carries him afar, his attempt to build a collective identity leads him to concentrate wholly upon the Japanese experience in America. Except for the long, hortatory poem ‘‘Stepchild,’’ Hongo resists the twin temptations to script an Asian American history at a single stroke and to lash out at those elements of American culture that have worked to deprive Japanese Americans not only of their identity but, more insidiously, of their awareness of their need for one. Instead, he concentrates on individuals and on fragments of lives, and allows their interconnections steadily and silently to accumulate. Within this compass, Hongo ranges widely, from a memorable portrait of a harddrinking plantation laborer in Hawaii named Kubota who ‘‘laughs and lights a cigarette, / breathes out a wreath of smoke / for his funeral, fifty years away’’ (‘‘Kubota’’) to an evocative description of a visit to the Nippon Kan in
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Seattle’s Astor Hotel, where yellowing programs and an ‘‘open tray of greasepaint,’’ lonely artifacts from a final stage performance in the fall of 1941, help lead to a surrealistic epiphany, a moment of total engagement within the past (‘‘On the Last Performance of Musume´ Dojoji . . . ’’). ‘‘And Your Soul Shall Dance’’ is a hymn to the artist and writer Wakako Yamauchi, who, as a child, yearns so intensely to escape the unpoetic confines of her environment, a ‘‘flat valley grooved with irrigation ditches,’’ that when she enters the schoolyard her ‘‘classmates scatter like chickens, / shooed by the storm brooding’’ on her horizon. Occasionally, Hongo slips. The poem ‘‘Roots,’’ which celebrates the links the poet has forged with his Japanese past and the self which has come into his possession, is overburdened finally by the weight of its message. Simply to affirm that there is ‘‘a signature to all things / the same as my own’’ is not enough when the reader expects to be shown that this is so. The long ‘‘Crusing 99’’ suffers from the opposite problem: despite its boisterous humor, it is never completely clear of purpose and ultimately grinds to a halt before a mystifying ‘‘scarecrow / made of tumbleweeds’’ and its own disconcerting mixture of poetic styles. And perhaps more poems on the war-time internment of the Japanese on the West Coast are in order too, given Hongo’s avowed concern with curing the condition of ‘‘amnesia’’ within Japanese American culture. Nevertheless, this is an excellent volume of poetry, make no mistake. Hongo applies wit, intelligence, and craftsmanship to his serious theme as few others have been able to do. His book is certain to gain a privileged station in Asian American literature courses, as well as to fuel the continuing controversy over enlarging the American literary canon. Source: George Uba, ‘‘A Review of Yellow Light,’’ in Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, Winter 1985, pp. 123–25.
Diane Wakoski In the following review, Wakoski lauds Yellow Light as an exciting book of poetry. In the spring of 1963, Gilberto Sorrentino, primary book reviewer for Kulchur magazine, reviewed my second appearance in print, a book called, as a joke by its editor LeRoi Jones, Four Young Lady Poets. In his review, Sorrentino said, Diane Wakoski is the least interesting of the four poets presented. . . . Essentially, this is middle-class poetry. . . . Miss Wakoski’s poems
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are disguised in the ‘‘modern’’ trappings but she is as superficial as Edward Albee, another middle-class product.
Of the three other poets, Carol Berge has gone on to become an interesting avant garde fiction writer; Rochelle Owens, an impressive avant garde playwright; and, until recently, Barbara Moraff had more or less disappeared from the literary world, to my knowledge not having published any books for the past 10 years. For better or worse, I have published 13 collections of poems, numerous small press ‘‘slim volumes,’’ and a bit of writing on contemporary American poetry. I have begun my review with this painful memory, never quite healed, to say that I vowed when reading that unthinking and condescending view of my work (though, I must say, I am a deep admirer of Albee’s plays, but I am afraid that our work has little in common, not even middle-classness, for when Sorrentino was writing those lines he had obviously not investigated my life. I come from the lower classes, with virtually uneducated poverty-line parents) that I would never so thoughtlessly review young writers, first books, new work. The three books of poems I want to talk about here are very fine examples of poetry and authors whose work I am thankful to talk about. I would like to say things about Hongo, Luhrmann, and Williamson that I wish had been said about my early work, for I feel great affinities with all these poets, each so different but each working in the strength of ‘‘American grain.’’ It was not entirely gratuitous of me to quote Sorrentino’s words about my early poems. For something he said as condemnation—‘‘Middleclass’’—is now, 20 years later, something we must reckon with as mainstream reality. And for better or worse, we have made a middleclass art in America, to serve I suppose, the first genuine middle-class country where, according to the authors of Megatrends, there are now more white collar workers than blue, and information is our new industry. When we use words like ‘‘academic,’’ ‘‘middleclass,’’ and ‘‘bourgeois,’’ as pejorative now, I think we all sound a little dated and out of touch. There is a new American poetry which comes out of comfortable orderly lives. It is written by the Kinnells, Staffords, Levertovs, Creeleys, Kumins, Rothenbergs, and even Ginsbergs. The ‘‘men in Brooks Brothers suits’’ are no longer the enemies. In fact, we live in a decade where it is hard to
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identify the enemy, though many of the predictions of Orwell’s 1984 have come true. Selfdestruction seems far more a hazard of our society than either a Big Brother or a Gestapo-style police. It is to these problems that Tom Luhrmann addresses himself in The Objects in the Garden. Like most of us, Luhrmann is a member of the American middle-class who perceives inherent difficulty and pain in the comfortable, even beautiful way of life we have achieved. . . . In contrast to The Objects in the Garden, Garrett Hongo’s Yellow Light could originate in another world. And perhaps it does. Hongo is first generation American, with Japanese parents. Some part of his childhood was lived in Hawaii, and most of his poems are located in Southern California. This is a dull way to introduce what I think is one of the most exciting books of poems I have read in recent years. It was love at first reading, that had me walking through the midwestern streets of East Lansing, Michigan, dreaming of Southern California, thinking of Rexroth’s poems, feeling the spice of crossing two cultures and having the riches of both. Hongo’s language is more sensuous than Kinnell’s or Levertov’s or Lorca’s, at his best. Not to slight those poets, all favorites of mine, but Hongo is astonishing. After reading ‘‘Who Among You Knows The Essence of Garlic?’’ I may give up writing food poems, for this one tops everything I have seen in my Feastletters search. Flukes of giant black mushrooms leap from their murky tubs and strangle the toes of young carrots. Broiling chickens ooze grease, yellow tears of fat collect and spatter in the smoking pot. Soft ripe pears, blushing on the kitchen window sill, kneel like plump women taking a long, luxurious shampoo, and invite you to bite their lips. Why not grab basketfuls of steaming noodles lush and slick as the hair of a fine lady, and squeeze? Two shrimps, big as Portuguese thumbs stew among cut guavas, red onions. . . . It is an amazing piece of descriptive writing. But that is the least of Hongo’s skills. He has written the best poem I have ever seen on the American treatment of native Japanese during the Second World War, because it is not really
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written about that subject, nor does it preach or editorialize in any way. It is a poem called ‘‘Off from swing shift,’’ which is about his father coming home from work and getting involved with his passion of gambling, in this case, the home races. He ends the poem, There are whole cosmologies in a single handicap, a lifetime of two-dollar losing in one pick of the Daily Double. Maybe tonight is his night for winning, his night for beating the odds of going deaf from a shell at Anzio still echoing in the cave of his inner ear, his night for cashing in the blue chips of shrapnel still grinding at the thickening joints of his legs. But no one calls the horse’s name, no one says Shackles, Rebate, or Pouring Rain. No one speaks a word. It is true, when one has a rich ethnic background, full of unusual customs, interesting foods, a different language or perhaps even religion that there might be something richer in a person’s life to write about. Perhaps Sorrentino’s dismissal of the middle-class was a feeling that there could be nothing to write about in the uniform lives of the suburbs compared to the slums of big cities. Yet, John Updike has magnificently disproved that in his Rabbit series. The one difference I see between Hongo and Luhrmann’s middle-classness, has nothing to do with richness of materials, for both have immense imagination and sensuous powers of description. No, the difference is that Luhrmann’s poems are shadowed with a sense of impending crisis, both social and personal (because the social will affect us all), and Hongo’s poetry simply is filled with a—what shall I call it—joie de vivre? Elan? Somehow there is no contemporary word, but there is an enthusiasm which simply cannot be suppressed. In a long poem, ‘‘Cruising 99’’ the reader can feel the spirit of life itself moving from rhythmic incantation to prophecy. But unlike Luhrmann’s prophecy, Hongo’s comes from the persona of a wayside palmist who tells him, Look at your hand now. You can see yourself dancing on the hell just above the wrist. You must be a happy man.
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You’ll be born again and again, get to the threshold of Heaven, never enter but keep coming back, here, for fun, for friends, until this will be Paradise, and Paradise just an old resort the highway’s passed by. Well have a nice trip. You’ll make it yet. Says so right in that curvy line around the Mount of Venus, that thumbstump there, right where the long straight line cuts across like an interstate. Contrast this with Lurhmann’s lines in ‘‘Hurricane Weather,’’ The hurricane has come and overturned the Ferris wheel. It has covered the bugle with dust and set the rocking horse on fire. It has mated the ostrich and the rhino and made one of us think he’s in Heaven. And no wonder words don’t work. Perhaps I love Luhrmann’s poems for their sense of doom, just as I love Hongo’s for their insouciance. What the truth of American poetry today is, is that both Hongo and Luhrmann came through middle-class college educations, Luhrmann at Sarah Lawrence and New College, Hongo at Pomona College; and both have MFA degrees in writing, from Columbia and UC, Irvine, respectively. And they have personal individual visions, not some stereotype we must label and reject as ‘‘middle-class.’’ Source: Diane Wakoski, ‘‘A Review of Yellow Light,’’ in American Book Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, January-February 1984, pp. 4–5.
SOURCES Drake, Barbara, ‘‘Garrett Hongo,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 120, American Poets since World War II, 3rd ser., edited by R. S. Gwynn, Gale Research, 1992, pp. 133–36. Fonseca, Anthony J., ‘‘Garrett Hongo,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 312, Asian American Writers, edited by Deborah L. Madsen, Thomson Gale, 2005, pp. 117–22. Slowik, Mary, ‘‘Beyond Lot’s Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura,’’ in MELUS, Vol. 25, nos. 3-4, FallWinter 2000, p. 221. Uba, George, ‘‘A Review of Yellow Light,’’ in Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, Winter 1985, pp. 123–25.
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Wakoski, Diane, ‘‘A Review of Yellow Light,’’ in American Book Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, January-February 1984, pp. 4–5.
FURTHER READING Cheung, King-Kok, ed., An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Frequently referenced by scholars of Asian American literature, this volume contains essays on topics pertinent to studying literature in this area. In addition to considering literature by ethnicity, the editor includes essays that compare works across ethnicity to uncover similarities in theme and style. Filipelli, Laurie, Garrett Hongo, Boise State University, 1997. Filipelli’s book is the only book-length biography
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to date for Hongo. It is part of the Western Writers series, and is referenced often in studies on the poet. Hongo, Garrett, Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaii, Vintage, 1996. Using a strong journey motif, Hongo explores the people and places of his childhood, seeking his roots both figuratively and literally. Critics find this book interesting on its own, but particularly interesting for readers of Hongo’s poetry. Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and James A. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar, Houghton Mifflin, 1973, reprint, 2002. Japanese American writer Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband describe her experiences at the Manzanar, California internment camp during World War II. Rather than giving an overview, they offer a personal account that makes the dishonor of internment accessible to a young-adult audience.
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Woman Work By the time Maya Angelou wrote ‘‘Woman Work’’ in 1978, she had already published three volumes of prose in addition to two previous collections of poetry. It is for her prose that she is most highly praised but her poetry—and ‘‘Woman Work’’ in particular—explores themes such as exploitation and self-identity in an intimate and immediate way that cannot be achieved in prose. Poetry is by its nature more personal and in most cases, relies heavily upon the meaning and value of every single word. Feelings, nuances, and emotions must be inferred or explained in a more economical format, making every word matter.
MAYA ANGELOU 1978
Angelou’s identity as an African American, a woman, and an African American woman influences much of her poetry. This is true of all the poems included in the collection And Still I Rise (republished in 2001 as Still I Rise). The theme of self-identity in ‘‘Woman Work,’’ is especially interesting because the poem allows for two related but differing interpretations. Using imagery and rhythm, Angelou provides the reader with details of her speaker’s workaday world, a world in which every day is like the last, and relief is found only in communing with nature. Angelou’s masterful manipulation of words presents two possible scenarios: the narrator is a slave or she is representative of any woman whose daily life is dedicated to caring for others. ‘‘Woman Work’’ was published in a decade when poetry was more mainstream than
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann (or Annie) Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was just three years old, and she and her brother (who nicknamed her Maya) were sent to live with her paternal grandmother in the povertystricken rural town of Stamps, Arkansas. The children called their strict but loving grandmother Momma and spent those Arkansas years in relative calm. At age seven or eight, while visiting her mother in St. Louis, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When she told her uncles what had happened, they murdered him. Angelou felt responsible and suffered extreme feelings of guilt. She ceased talking and was returned to Momma in Arkansas. Angelou was mute for five years, during which time she developed a love of language and, ironically, the spoken word. She memorized poetry and secretly—for white authors were forbidden by Momma—read William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe. At twelve, Angelou began to speak again.
Maya Angelou (Getty Images)
it is in the twenty-first century. The 1970s were years of self-exploration for women but also for young people in general. This was a transitional decade marked by the end of the controversial Vietnam War, the increasing momentum of the Feminist Movement, and a shift in how Americans considered themselves and their place in society as social norms and values changed. The cultural focus became one of individualism, and the increased interest in self-analysis and understanding manifested in an surge of self-help books and self-awareness discussion groups. Poetry was the ideal literary form for the decade because it could have structure or not; it could rhyme or not; it could be specific or general. In other words, poetry was a personal expression that could take virtually any shape and still be a legitimate literary form. People who might not write an essay or an article could express themselves in poetry. And so, poetry in the 1970s was used as a vehicle to explore one’s self in relation to the world. ‘‘Woman Work’’ does that.
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Momma and the children moved to San Francisco, where Angelou’s mother was living, in the 1940s when the presence of the Ku Klux Klan made Stamps a dangerous place to live. Angelou graduated from high school at seventeen and soon gave birth to a son she named Guy. She held various jobs in those early years, including dinner cook and night club dancer. In the early 1950s, Angelou married a white man named Tosh Angelos. The marriage did not last, and after the divorce she studied dance and joined the cast of a touring production of Porgy and Bess. Angelou continued to dance professionally throughout the decade. After another brief marriage that took her and Guy to Egypt, Angelou moved to Ghana, West Africa, in 1962. She earned a living as a freelance writer and feature editor. Returning to the United States in the mid-1960s, Angelou took a position as a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles and continued acting. She began writing her first autobiographical volume, which was published in 1968. Nominated for a National Book Award, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings remains Angelou’s most famous and beloved work. She eventually published five more volumes of her autobiography.
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Angelou turned her sights to poetry and published her first collection in 1971. Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie earned its author a Pulitzer Prize nomination and was followed by two more volumes that decade, the second of which was And Still I Rise (1978), in which ‘‘Woman Work’’ appears. Angelou married once more, in 1973; the union ended in 1980. By 2009, Angelou had published more than thirty best-selling volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition, she has written plays, children’s books, essays, film and television scripts, and dozens of articles for various journals and periodicals. In addition to writing, dancing, acting, and teaching/lecturing, Angelou’s career includes civil rights activism (with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.), singing, and film directing. Highlights include an invitation to compose and read a poem at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 and a seat on two presidential committees. Angelou’s work and efforts have been honored with countless awards, including three Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts (2000), the Lincoln Medal (2008), and more than thirty honorary degrees from universities across the country. In 2009, Angelou was featured as one of Success Magazine’s top five women who wield extraordinary influence through their work. Cited especially for her efforts to combat racism and injustice, Angelou credits her selfdirected education for empowering her to incite change. In the interview with Erin Casey, Angelou explains how education ‘‘liberated me from some of the ignorance that can make a person mean and cruel and prejudiced and stupid. Education has helped me understand that this is my world, but no more mine than yours.’’
POEM TEXT I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry Then baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I’ve got the shirts to press The tots to dress The cane to be cut I gotta clean up this hut
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Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky ’Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You’re all that I can call my own.
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POEM SUMMARY Lines 1–14 This first stanza of ‘‘Woman Work’’ is the most important in the poem because it is here the reader could infer that the woman speaking is a slave. Lines 11 and 14 talk about crops that need tending. These are not just any crops, but those grown in the Deep South and traditionally harvested by African American slaves. Cane and cotton were two of the most profitable crops in the Antebellum (pre–Civil War) South, and plantations relied on them for profit. The most economical means of harvesting them was through free—slave—labor. Once that fact is established, the first stanza takes on new meaning. The chores listed are not necessarily—or even probably—the woman’s own. Whose children is she tending, whose clothes need mending? Is the floor that needs mopping her own? Surely not, since line 12 tells the reader she lives in a hut. Would she be having company? Probably not, but wealthy plantation owners often entertained guests. Most, if not all, of the first stanza refers to activity that is imposed upon the woman for the benefit of others. Nowhere does she talk about herself except in relation to the responsibilities she is expected to fulfill. Conversely, some readers might interpret this first stanza to be a description in the life of any hardworking woman in a domestic situation. Until the late 1940s and early 1950s, African
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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Maya Angelou reads an abridged version of And Still I Rise on audiocassette, produced by Random House Audio in 1996.
Random House Audio Voices released an unabridged version of And Still I Rise on CD in 2001. The author reads her own work.
An audio download of 13 selections from And Still I Rise is available at http://www. audible.com. The poem ‘‘Woman Work’’ is included.
Americans often found work as sharecroppers in the south; they worked and lived on the land as tenants. In return, a certain percentage of the harvest was given to the landowner. Cane and cotton were prominent crops in the American South and needed someone to tend to them. Read from this perspective, the woman’s life would be very similar to that of a slave because much of her daily work is done for the benefit of someone else, though to a lesser extent. Her housing would still be shabby, accurately described as a ‘‘hut,’’ perhaps with wooden floors that required mopping.
THEMES Slavery
Lines 15–18 invoke the sun’s warmth and the rain’s dewy moisture to cool her brow. Lines 19–22 beseech the storm and its wind to blow her across the sky, far from where she is, so that she might find rest.
Upon first read, ‘‘Woman Work’’ may seem like a poem written about any woman with a family to care for. Lines 11 and 14 clearly change that impression because most women in modern America do not cut (sugar) cane or pick cotton. These two chores indicate that the woman is a slave. Considered in this light, the reader understands that the bulk of the chores that make up the woman’s day are not self-serving; they are chores she must perform for her master. The children belong to him. The floor that needs mopping in line 3 is probably not hers, since she lives in a hut. The company she must feed? It is probably not hers. Although some of what she must accomplish may be for herself, most of it is not.
Lines 23–26 rely on gentle snow to cover and comfort her so that she can rest her weary body and mind.
Line 12 suggests the woman is a slave. Most people, even those living in abject poverty, would not refer to their homes as huts. The
Lines 15–30 The remaining four stanzas can be analyzed together because they work as one unit. Whereas the first stanza, which is nearly four times longer than each of the remaining four, concerns itself with what the woman must do on a daily basis for someone else, the remaining sixteen lines are all about what nature can do for her.
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The final stanza, lines 27–30, acknowledges that the woman owns nothing but nature’s elements, and even that ownership is figurative rather than literal. Every moment of the woman’s life is spent in service to others, and when at last she is done at the end of a long and tiring day, all she has left is the natural world surrounding her: sun, sky, mountain and stone, stars, and moonlight. These last four stanzas are all about finding comfort and release, stolen moments of peace from the monotonous and never-ending routine of her daily life. Nature is the source of this woman’s strength. The idea that the woman speaking is a slave is reinforced in the final line of the poem. While lines 11, 14, and 30, support the idea that the speaker is a slave, so does the placement of the poem in the collection And Still I Rise. ‘‘Woman Work’’ is situated between ‘‘To Beat the Child was Bad Enough’’ and ‘‘One More Round.’’ The former is about child abuse; the latter about slavery. Both surrounding poems explore themes of bondage and abuse, and ‘‘One More Round’’ discusses the ‘‘daily grind’’ of slavery, suggesting a routine of toil and exploitation. It would make sense that ‘‘Woman Work’’ examine a similar topic.
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Choose a poem from the ‘‘Thorns’’ section of Pat Mora’s collection titled My Own True Name: New and Selected Poems for Young Adults. Compare the imagery in one of these Latina poems with that used in Angelou’s ‘‘Woman Work.’’ Make a Venn diagram to illustrate how the imagery is similar and how it is different. How does the imagery used help the reader ‘‘see’’ Mora’s poem? Using marker, paint, or colored pencils, draw a picture to represent each of the five stanzas in ‘‘Woman Work.’’ Be sure the colors you choose reflect the feeling each stanza inspires in you. As an alternative, find images and create a PowerPoint slide presentation to present the feelings each stanza inspires. Read Angelou’s poem, ‘‘Phenomenal Woman.’’ How does it compare to ‘‘Woman Work’’? Write a brief report on how the poems are alike and how they differ. Include in your report mention of themes and literary style. Read the poem once with the idea that the woman is a slave. Read it again with the idea that she is just an ordinary woman. How does the meaning of the poem change upon these two readings? Write an essay using specific lines from the poem to support your ideas. Consider an aspect of your own life and write a poem about it. Try to use sound, imagery, and other style techniques to make your poem come to life. Read the poem aloud to the class. Using your own words, rewrite ‘‘Woman Work’’ as an English sonnet. The English sonnet is a 14-line poem that uses an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme. How does changing the structure of a poem change its meaning and how it affects the reader?
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poor, but this line, taken along with the others, strongly suggests she is a slave. The final line of the poem also makes clear that the woman is a slave. By claiming only nature as her own, she acknowledges her lack of control or ownership over the rest of her life. At the end of a long, back-breaking day, this (slave) woman takes comfort in the sun and the rain, the stars and the moon. They assuage her sadness and soothe her spiritual emptiness. They are all she owns in the world. Those readers who interpret the poem to be about women in general rather than those within the confines of slavery might substitute the slavery theme with one of work. Lines 1 through 14—nearly half the poem—examine this theme by listing chore after chore after chore. The reader quickly understands that the woman’s life revolves around the duties she must perform.
Self-Identity The poem is an exploration of self-identity. This particular woman identifies who she is by what she does: She works for—is owned by—someone else. She is a slave. She is a tired woman who wants nothing more than to rest. Lines 22 and 26 support the idea that her world is a weary one. There is no evidence throughout the poem that the woman identifies herself using any other means of measurement. She makes it clear in line 30 that she owns nothing more than her natural surroundings. She lives without. She is nothing more than her role allows her to be. Self-identity is a theme of the poem regardless of reader interpretation. Even if the speaker is not a slave, she clearly considers her life in terms of its drudgery and daily routine. Enjoyment is found only when the work is done and she can rest.
African American Culture The institution of slavery is a major, if not the primary, factor in understanding the African American culture and experience in America. Because ‘‘Woman Work’’ explores the theme of slavery, by extension it explores the theme of African American culture.
Gender Roles woman in the poem lives in a hut—a small, crude shelter. Most slaves lived in shacks and huts while their masters lived in great, sprawling mansions. It is possible that the woman is simply
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‘‘Woman Work’’ examines what it meant to be an African American woman in a slave culture. If this poem were about a man, the first 14 lines would read quite differently, with the exception
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of lines 11 and 14. Although male slaves cut cane and picked cotton alongside the women, the bulk of their chores were different, perhaps not so mundane. In that same vein, there is no way to know if line 15 through 30 would have been written as they are if the person speaking was male. Historically, women have been more connected to nature (Mother Earth) and its physical aspects; their work has centered around natural functions: caring for children and the sick, preparing food and cleaning up afterward, even the act of sex has been, historically, an obligation for women. Men interact with nature in a more exploitive way, generally speaking. Their interaction with the physical aspects of the earth has historically been to take what they need or want by hunting, mining, drilling, logging, and so on. That the woman in the poem finds comfort in nature is a natural extension of her traditional gender role. Were the speaker a man, those four stanzas would create a completely different message because of their traditional gender role and relationship to nature.
Exploitation To be exploited is to work excessively hard for someone else’s benefit. The first stanza of this poem explores the theme of exploitation whether the woman is understood to be a slave or simply representative of most women. The list of chores never ends; as soon as she completes the last one, the cycle begins again. She is overworked, exhausted, and weary, but all the effort expended is for someone else’s benefit.
Woman sewing (Image copyright Gertjan Hooijer, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
the dew cools her brow and the winds carry her across the sky. She is communing with nature and finding peace and even a kind of balance in her dreary life.
Nature The four shorter stanzas consisting of lines 15–30 concern themselves with nature as a source of comfort and rejuvenation. For the woman whose life is defined by what she must do, the peaceful qualities found in nature—gentle snowflakes, curving sky, cooling dewdrops—are gifts she relies upon to provide respite from her activity-filled days.
Transcendence Despite the obvious repetition of the chores described in lines 1–14, ‘‘Woman Work’’ is about transcendence, or rising above and beyond the limitations imposed upon the speaker. Lines 15–30 find her engaged in a sensual (meaning of the physical senses), almost spiritual experience as
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STYLE Rhyme Rhyme is a technique that often lends a singsong quality to a poem. Angelou’s use of rhyme in much of her poetry is one aspect critics tend to criticize because they believe it makes her poetry sound juvenile. Angelou’s use of rhyme in the first 14 lines of ‘‘Woman Work,’’ however, is appropriate and underscores the meaning behind the stanza. By developing the stanza using rhyming couplets (every pair of lines rhymes), the poem shows that the work is mundane. That rhyming quality makes the stanza seem more like a list whose
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items must be checked off every day. The woman’s frustration can be felt as she reels off the list of activities she must complete. Rhyme is used but more loosely in the four shorter stanzas and not to the same effect. Instead, the end rhyme is a means of pulling together each stanza to present a complete image in the reader’s mind.
Imagery Imagery is descriptive language that evokes a sensory (sight, smell, taste, sight, and sound) experience. The poem’s four shorter stanzas, in which the speaker refers to nature and its elements, uses imagery to convey meaning. For example, in the third stanza, lines 19–22, she uses words and phrases that force the reader to envision what is happening: storm, blow, fiercest wind, float. Likewise, lines 23–26 rely on imagery: Snowflakes fall gently, giving cold, icy kisses. The reader can actually see these images as the speaker describes them.
Rhythm Angelou does not use a consistent rhythm throughout the poem or even throughout each stanza, but she uses it in much the same way she does rhyme: to underscore the meaning of her message. In lines 1–14, the lines are relatively short—4 to 7 syllables. Nearly every word in those lines is one syllable. These two features considered together give the stanza a choppy feel, even as the aforementioned rhyme lends a singsong quality. The brevity of both words and line length add to that feeling of the speaker checking off each activity as its listed or reeling off the (seemingly) endless list quickly before she forgets something.
Repetition Repetition is used only in the first 14 lines. Like the rhyme and rhythm techniques, this repetition lends itself well to the point of the stanza. Lines 1, 7, 9, and 12 begin with some form of the word ‘‘I,’’ a reminder that the speaker is burdened with this laundry list of chores. Lines 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 11 begin with ‘‘the.’’ Again, this repetition adds to the singsong rhythm that serves this stanza so well. Lines 5, 6, and 13 begin with ‘‘then.’’ First the speaker must do this, this, and this, and then she must do that, that, and that. Repetition
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emphasizes the endlessness of the responsibilities shouldered by the woman.
Alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of consonants, and Angelou employs alliteration all the way through the first stanza, or 14 lines. She uses hard consonant sounds, primarily ‘‘c’’ and ‘‘t.’’ These give a harsh, angry tone to the words of the stanza. This harshness is emphasized by the short length of the words: tots, cane, cut, hut, sick, pick, mop, shop.
Personification Objects are personified when they are given human characteristics. Although Angelou does not use personification very much, she does use it when talking about the woman’s interactions with nature. In lines 17 and 18, the dewdrops cool her brow. Usually, the idea of cooling one’s brow involves one person comforting another. In lines 23–25, the snowflakes cover the woman with kisses. Again, this is an act of comfort, one usually involving humans. This use of personification emphasizes the important role nature plays in the speaker’s life. Nature relieves and comforts, restores and provides. It acts as a sort of soul mate in the life of a woman who has spoken not one word of having a partner or husband or even friend.
Spoken Word All of the style techniques mentioned previously are more obvious if the reader reads this poem aloud. Angelou writes in the oral tradition, meaning she intends for her work to be spoken aloud. By speaking the lines, the reader more clearly hears the rhythm, the rhyme, the repetition, and alliteration. Sounds of letters and words support the imagery. The combination of sound and voice intonation brings this particular poem to life.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The 1970s were a decade of social and cultural transition in the United States. America was well into the Vietnam War, and the country found itself divided according to political ideology. The 1960s, known as a period of great social activism owing in part to the war, faded as the 1970s
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COMPARE & CONTRAST
1970s: The social and cultural focus is on women’s rights as women seek equality in the workplace and beyond. Today: Women have made great progress since the 1970s, but they still make only seventy-eight cents for every dollar earned by men. Although more men stay home and take care of household chores than ever before, cooking, cleaning, and tending to children is still largely considered women’s work.
1970s: There is an outpouring of new work regarding the history of slavery in the American South. Landmark studies and research lead historians to reassess and reinterpret that era in American history. Today: Slave narratives are accepted as legitimate texts in the American literary canon.
morphed into a culture of self-absorption. As the war came to an end, the Feminist Movement came to fruition and gained momentum. As women challenged traditional societal expectations and gender roles, the emphasis shifted from what America was as a society to who Americans were as individuals and what they needed and wanted. It became a decade of psychological analysis and self-awareness.
Social Movements Three social movements defined the 1970s: Environmentalism, Feminism, Gay Rights. Major environmental legislation was passed, most notably the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, followed by the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. As concern for the environment and its resources increased, so did the interest in nuclear power. When the Three Mile Island nuclear plant meltdown in 1979 made headlines across the country, opposition to nuclear power intensified.
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American culture recognizes the injustices of the institution of slavery, and the federal government makes a formal apology but does not pay slavery reparations.
1970s: The trend in poetry leans toward confessional (the sharing of intimate details of one’s life), surrealistic (dream-like imagery to represent the subconscious), and multicultural (voices from a variety of cultures). There is a strong interest in the voices of African American women. Today: Poetry is in a transitional state. As an art form, it is embraced more academically than it was in previous decades. And yet, the existence of blogs, social networking sites, and zines makes poetry more accessible to the masses than ever before.
The women’s rights movement known as the second wave of feminism gained momentum throughout the 1970s. Women demanded equal consideration and treatment and joined the workforce in numbers never before seen in America. Women’s groups—such as the National Organization for Women—that were formed in the 1960s increased their memberships as women sought both social and political balance in their lives. By the mid-1970s, many federal laws had been passed promoting equality for women. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 made discrimination on the basis sex illegal in any educational institution that received federal funds and opened the way for greater opportunities for women. Military academies began accepting female students. The most controversial case ever to appear before the Supreme Court made legal a woman’s right to have an abortion. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 and remains at the forefront of political and social issues even in the twenty-first century.
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Woman doing laundry (Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)
Politics and the Economy
Culture
America’s political scene in the 1970s was as tumultuous. President Richard Nixon began pulling troops out of Vietnam in the early years and began efforts to improve relations with China and the Soviet Union. These activities increased his popularity and helped him win reelection in 1972. By 1974, Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as president. Ford was not a popular president, largely because he had pardoned Nixon, and he lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter whose problems with the Iranian hostage crisis served to point out the continuing discontent with American foreign policy.
As women gained more rights with the passing of federal legislation, social norms and laws were increasingly favorable to women. They became more visible outside the home and neighborhood and in the media as they broke traditional gender role expectations and blurred the lines of the social structure. At home, American viewers enjoyed what became known as ‘‘social consciousness’’ programming. All in the Family was a comedy that explored controversial topics such as racism, feminism, poverty, and more and remained the highest-rated television series from 1971 through 1976. By the late 1970s, however, America was more interested in lighter-hearted series such as Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company.
The end of the decade saw America in economic and energy crisis, the foundation of which was the soaring cost of imported oil. Gasoline was rationed, and the country found itself in energy conservation mode, a huge factor in the rise of the environmental movement’s activities. Inflation and recession both hurt economic growth.
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Art Mimics Life All of these factors—social, political, economic, and cultural—influenced the arts of the 1970s. Whether art reflected life at the time or the other way around, one thing was certain: literature in the 1970s was all about self-exploration, mainly
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through poetry and primarily by women. Parallel to the increased exploration of racism and feminism was the rise in the interest of African American writers and their works. Popular poets of the decade include Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Gwendolyn Brooks, each of whom wrote about women, their lives as African Americans, and the hardships experienced as both.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Maya Angelou is known and praised primarily for her autobiographical volumes. Her poem ‘‘Woman Work’’ was published in her third volume of poetry And Still I Rise. Of that collection, a Publishers Weekly critic writes, ‘‘Hers is not a major poetical voice. . . . But her warmth, honesty, strength and deep-rooted sense of personal pride—call it defiance—come through in almost every word she sets down.’’ Angelou’s poetry written in the early 1970s focused on the role of African American women in the slave culture of the mid-nineteenth century through the more rebellious era of the 1960s. Though published in 1978, ‘‘Woman Work’’ is a poem that easily fits along that continuum. The thirty-two poems included in And Still I Rise include her oft-examined themes of love and its accompanying loneliness as well as the Southern oppression of African Americans. Yet this is the collection in which Angelou begins exploring other themes as well, including the nature of woman. Whether one considers ‘‘Woman Work’’ a slice-of-life portrayal of an African American slave woman or as a general commentary on the life of any woman in general, it is clear that Angelou is committing to print her thoughts on what it means to be a woman. In the 1996 book, Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet, Lyman B. Hagen extols Angelou’s gift as a natural storyteller saying, ‘‘She sometimes describes, sometimes narrates, but most often dramatizes.’’ Angelou uses this gift in her prose and poetry alike. In the twenty-first century, Angelou remains admired more for her prose than her poetry. Most of her poems are relatively short and rely on rhyme and simple language. Critical reception of her poetry has generally been more negative than positive, with critics unimpressed with the quality. Janet Blundell of Library Journal judged one poetry collection to be ‘‘no match
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for Angelou’s prose writings.’’ Yet the author has a dedicated and loyal audience for her poetry as well as her prose. Angelou’s Random House editor, Robert Loomis, writes in a letter to the critic Lyman Hagen, ‘‘I’ve always believed that those who have reservations about Angelou’s poetry simply don’t understand what she’s doing. . . . What she is writing is poetry that is very definitely in what I could call the oral tradition.’’ This assessment goes hand-in-hand with Hagen’s belief that Angelou is a storyteller. Stories in African American cultures were passed down orally; they rely on rhyme, rhythm, and sound for meaning and full appreciation.
CRITICISM Rebecca Valentine Valentine is a freelance writer and editor who holds a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis on literary analysis. In this essay, she suggests that a feminist analysis of ‘‘Woman Work’’ supports the idea that the juxtaposition of nature and physical labor makes the poem a piece of protest literature. The definition of protest literature is fluid and varies according to perspective. For example, social critics could insist that protest literature must include a specific political purpose. A feminist critic may look to protest literature to promote (or avoid promoting) a gender bias. The deconstructionist who is concerned only with language and definition and not at all with the author’s intention may well argue that all literature is a form of protest. Whittled to the bare bones, any definition of protest literature must at least include the idea that the author is speaking against something. If we assume that ‘‘Woman Work’’ is written in the voice of a female slave, Angelou has written a poem in defiance of oppression. By essentially dividing the poem in half—the first half listing the speaker’s chores, the second half reconnecting with nature—Angelou defends a woman’s refusal to be only what she is socially allowed to be. Lines 1–14 of ‘‘Woman Work’’ create a checklist of chores the speaker of the poem must do on a daily basis. She tends to children and the sick, shops for food and prepares it, cleans the house, mends and irons clothing, harvests crops and weeds gardens. The work is mundane and demanding; it is physically draining and mentally
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unrewarding. It is the life that has been prescribed for the woman because she is a slave. The tone of that stanza is depressing. There is no enthusiasm or interest in the voice of the speaker. She speaks in clipped phrases, using blunt words that reveal her world-weary attitude.
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
L. Patricia Kite’s biography Maya Angelou (2006) is written for a young-adult audience. The book begins with Angelou being invited to read her poem at President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 and flashes back to her birth. From there, Kite works chronologically to present both personal and professional highlights. The Poetry Foundation’s Web site at http:// www.poetryfoundation.org provides visitors with full-text poems, biographies of poets, insightful articles, reading guides, the online edition of Poetry magazine, and much more. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 is a collection of poetry copied from the walls of Angel Island Immigration Station. Translated and published by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung in 1999, these poems tell of the sad and lonely experiences of thousands of immigrant hopefuls who came to America only to be treated with disrespect. Twenty-five of Angelou’s poems are collected in Edwin Graves Wilson’s Poetry for Young People: Maya Angelou (2007), illustrated by award-winning artist Jerome Lagarrigue. Each poem is preceded by an introduction. A special edition of Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman was published in 2000 and combines the poet’s words with paintings of Paul Gaugin. The poem by the same title was written in 1978 and published in the same collection as ‘‘Woman Work.’’ Young-adult author Anne Rinaldi has written a historical fiction novel about the slave poet Phillis Wheatley. Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley (1996) mixes fact with fiction to present the tale of America’s first African American poet, who died at the age of 30.
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Compare that tone with that of the other half of the poem, in which the speaker reunites with nature and the elements that bring her peace and respite. These stanzas are created using imagery— icy kisses, curving sky—and words that roll off the tongue. Gone is the harshness of the first 14 lines; it has been replaced not with another list, but with a conversation—albeit one-sided—between the woman and nature. Sociologists and cultural theorists alike have long purported that women are more earth centered than men. This is not to say that men do not appreciate and respect nature. But women, it is generally agreed upon, have a more reciprocal relationship with the earth. The work women have traditionally done—giving and nurturing life—is directly connected with nature and her cycles. This connection is more than just physical in nature; it is spiritual as well. In the era of American slavery, African Americans were considered the property of their owners. They had no rights, no voice, no say. The first stanza of ‘‘Woman Work’’ reflects these imposed restrictions. The woman’s life is filled with one chore, one responsibility, after another. Every waking moment is spent fulfilling the needs and wants of someone else; her own needs and desires go unattended. Her life is not her own. These limitations would have been devastating for anyone, man or woman. But they arguably caused a greater sense of loss for women. In her book Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit, Elizabeth Johnson explores the idea that because of the way women have lived historically, they ‘‘tend to experience themselves as a self in fundamental embodied connection with others.’’ Imagine, then, how crippling it must have been for African American women to lose their families and friends and be forced into bondage for people who cared not one bit for their wellbeing. Without that connection, this already marginalized group of women was pushed further to the outer banks of humanity. Yet Angelou’s poem suggests that no matter how merciless the master, no matter how backbreaking and tedious the labor, slave women
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refused to be oppressed to the point of nothingness. In ‘‘Woman Work,’’ the speaker turns to the only option left: nature. In her workaday world, the woman has no power. But with nature, she still has the ability to make requests, to ask that her needs be fulfilled. She speaks to nature almost as if to a lover when she uses phrases such as ‘‘fall softly,’’ ‘‘cover me,’’ and ‘‘let me rest.’’ Line 30 of the poem is especially pointed in its depiction of the woman’s relationship with nature. She owns it, claiming its comfort for herself. By depicting the woman’s daily hardship in the first 14 lines of the poem and her communion with nature in the last 16 lines, Angelou has created a piece of protest literature. She tells the reader that life is one tedious chore after another for this slave. She is not appreciated or valued, but merely expected to perform duty upon duty. She is exploited to such an extent that she is left feeling empty, alone, without. And yet this woman refuses to accept the life inflicted upon her as the only life she has. She turns and returns to nature and all her glorious gifts in search of comfort and solace. She makes requests and is honored with replies in the form of fiercely blowing winds, gently falling snowflakes, and endlessly curving skies. Despite the fact that the slave woman is ostracized, criticized, degraded, and nearly dehumanized, she retaliates—protests—by refusing to let those in power force her to a life of nothingness. Rather than dominate nature as others dominate her, the woman seeks and builds connections with the natural world around her. She considers nature a friend. She will not become what she is believed to be. Through resistance and a resolute spirit, the woman retains her sense of dignity and worth. In her heart, she has not forgotten who she is. Source: Rebecca Valentine, Critical Essay on ‘‘Woman Work,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Cassandra Spratling In the following interview, Spratling speaks with Angelou about her role as a woman. If there is one thing women should do for their daughters, it is praise them and tell them that they are somebody special, says the celebrated author, singer and poet Maya Angelou. ‘‘You tell them they’re pretty,’’ Angelou says. ‘‘You tell them they’re beautiful. You tell them that their hair is nice. Make over her
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because, know this, in the street there is somebody who’s going to do that, and not to her benefit. ‘‘Let her know that ‘my mother thinks I’m the big cheese,’ so that inside themselves they are secure that they are worthy to be treated well.’’ That’s a lesson Angelou learned from her mother, and it’s one described in her latest book, Letter to My Daughter (Random House). Angelou’s new book isn’t actually a letter to her daughter. In fact, she has only one child, a son. But she has mothered and mentored many women, including Oprah Winfrey. For twenty years, Angelou jotted down ideas, thoughts and snapshots of experiences — but never quite finished them. Last year she looked at what she had written and realized that she might have enough for a book. The result is a collection of reflections and insights that is part memoir, part prose, part poetry and all things Angelou. It is writing that takes you to a place where you taste the red rice she writes about, sway to the music she talks about and feel the faith that caused her grandmother to trust God in the face of a devastating Depression. Angelou says she didn’t write the book to preach or to attach a lesson to every story. ‘‘I try not to be that kind of teacher,’’ she says. ‘‘I suggest the reader will know if there’s a lesson in there for her, and it may be a different lesson than the one I extracted.’’ Born Marguerite Annie Johnson, Angelou was given the nickname Maya by her only sibling, her brother, Bailey. Her beloved grandmother raised her in Stamps, Ark., during her early childhood, although she later moved to California to live with her mother. At age seven, she was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend, and an uncle killed her attacker. She felt so responsible for the man’s death that she stopped speaking for five years. She thought her naming him had killed him. Her career began when she was given a scholarship to study dance and drama while in high school in San Francisco. It became her stepping stone to performing — singing, dancing, acting — and world travel, including a European tour in which she played Ruby in the opera ‘‘Porgy and Bess’’ in the 1950s.
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After moving to New York in the early 1960s, she became part of a community of artists and writers whose words and work both reflected and inspired the growing civil rights movement. She would eventually become most known for her writing. Her books include a series of biographical works, children’s books, poetry, a line of greeting cards and a cookbook that recreates many of her favorite foods. She captured the world’s attention when she read a poem she composed for President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, ‘‘On the Pulse of the Morning.’’ Angelou teaches at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she lives. This semester, she’s teaching a course on world poetry and dramatic performance. During a recent telephone conversation, Angelou discussed subjects ranging from her latest book to Michelle Obama, the economy and aging. People, she says, ought to look less at possessions and more toward one another for personal fulfillment. ‘‘It’s time for us to stop looking at things . . . and look at human beings. Look at the children. Look at the men. Look at the women.’’ She fondly recalls meeting Michelle Obama at a campaign fund-raiser in October, and describes her as genuine and graceful. ‘‘She’s the real deal. She has no pretense. No preening, no posturing,’’ Angelou says. ‘‘She was exactly herself. I told her, ‘I’m a 6-foot-tall, 80year-old African-American woman and that brings me to certain things.’ And she said to me, ‘I expect to be able to say that myself.’ . . . ‘‘That’s smart. That’s very smart. She’s very intelligent and knows where she is and who she is. She is a blessing.’’ As the nation’s first lady, Obama presents a sense of grace and poise that others, regardless of race or gender, could learn from, Angelou says. ‘‘It would behoove us all to learn some grace,’’ she says. ‘‘Grace is not just posture. It really is civility and that’s civil rights at the highest level. Civility, courtesy, well-chosen words, kindness, interest in other human beings, not just interest in one self.’’ That Angelou, who will turn 81 on April 4, is still teaching, writing, speaking and motivating
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women and men is a reflection of the poem that she has come to be known for, ‘‘Phenomenal Women.’’ Age shouldn’t stop a woman — or anyone — from accomplishing all she can, she says. She mentions civil rights pioneer Dr. Dorothy Height, president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women, as an example. The 95-year-old Height has invited Angelou to come to Washington, D.C., in April to speak at an event she is organizing. ‘‘I’m a patsy for her and all older women . . . particularly older black women,’’ says Angelou. ‘‘They clap their hands and I come running or walking as fast as I can.’’ Aging isn’t an end point, she says. ‘‘I can’t run the 5K dash. There are certain constraints that prohibit me from reaching certain goals so I make goals that are within my reach,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t ask myself to dance the jitterbug, but I still have rhythm.’’ Source: Cassandra Spratling, ‘‘Maya Angelou Reflects on Life, Grace, and Self-Esteem,’’ in Detroit Free Press, March 18, 2009.
Cassandra Spratling In the following article, Spratling writes about Angelou’s ability to make even the most mundane task into poetry, as she does in ‘‘Woman Work.’’ Reading Maya Angelou’s Even the Stars Look Lonesome (Random House) is almost like attending one of her soul-stirring readings: You get some poetry, some singing, some lecturing and a whole lot of earthy conversation about everything from Oprah and West African art to sexuality. And all of it’s good, even the bad stuff. Or, at least she makes it sound that way. Take the story of her last marriage. It’s a sad tale, really, because it’s more about the love they lost than the ties that bound them together. But, Angelou makes it sound so sweet, you end up feeling as much joy as sorrow. As usual, it’s the most personal recollections that are the best in this collection. Angelou consistently is able to make even the most mundane topic warm and exciting. There is, for example, the description of her house in Winston-Salem, N.C., the one she moved to after another house made her heart crumble. In this essay about the power of houses to heal and hurt, she leads the reader to feel and understand how much her house means to her, how a house really can be
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a home. More than love at first sight, it was home upon entry. Angelou ends with the tale of a woman who fails to find peace and joy within herself. But, again the reader isn’t left feeling down. Angelou reminds us to find greatness in simple things, pleasure in plain pursuits and good company with ourselves. A goodbook wouldn’t hurt either. Source: Cassandra Spratling, ‘‘Maya Angelou Waxes Personal with Poetry,’’ in Detroit Free Press, September 10, 2007.
SOURCES Angelou, Maya, Poems, Bantam, 1993. Blundell, Janet, Review of Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?, in Library Journal, Vol. 108, 1983, p. 746. Casey, Erin, ‘‘Women of Influence: Shattering Stereotypes and Raising the Bar, These Women Are Shaping America’s Future,’’ in Success Magazine, May 2009, pp. 50–56. ‘‘Global Renaissance Woman,’’ in MayaAngelou.com, http://mayaangelou.com/bio/ (accessed August 4, 2009). Hagen, Lyman B., Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou, University Press of America, 1996, p. 29, 118–36. Johnson, Elizabeth A., Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit, Paulist Press, 1993, p. 25. McGraw, Patricia Washington, ‘‘Maya Angelou,’’ in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, http:// www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entrydetail.aspx?entryID=1085 (accessed August 4, 2009). Mooney, Louise, ‘‘Maya Angelou,’’ in Newsmakers, Gale Research, 1993, http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/basic Search (accessed November 17, 2009). ‘‘1970s: Encyclopedia–1970s,’’ in Global Oneness, http:// www.experiencefestival.com/a/1970s/id/1900210 (accessed on July 31, 2009). Plant, Judith, ‘‘Women and Nature,’’ in The Green Fuse, http://www.thegreenfuse.org/plant.htm (accessed August 6, 2009).
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Review of Angelina of Italy in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 251, No. 36, September 6, 2004, p. 62. Soto, Kate, ‘‘American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics,’’ in Artvoice, http://artvoice.com/issues/v7 n4/american_poets_in_the_21st_century_the_new_poetics (accessed on July 31, 2009).
FURTHER READING Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Ballantine Books, 2009. Originally published in 1970, this is the first of five autobiographical works written by Angelou. This book recounts the author’s abusive and frustrating childhood. Angelou shares her memories in an authentic and genuine voice as she takes the reader through the days of her early youth, which ended with an unwanted pregnancy that changed her life irrevocably. Harper, Michael S., and Anthony Walton, Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans since 1945, Back Bay Books, 1994. This anthology collects the poetry of 35 poets born between 1913 and 1962. Although some of the featured poets are well known—Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove, for example—many are not. Taken together, the poetry provides a poignant look at life in America for African Americans. Hughes, Langston, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David E. Roessel, Vintage, 1995. This collection includes 860 poems, more than any previous collection of Hughes’s work. Readers will appreciate his humor and insight into the human condition. Seager, Joni, The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World: Fourth Edition, 4th ed., Penguin, 2000. This updated edition provides a current analysis of key issues faced by women across the globe today: women at work, changing households, equality, motherhood, domestic violence, and more. Maps, graphics, and illustrations enrich the book for the more visual learner.
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Glossary of Literary Terms A Abstract: Used as a noun, the term refers to a short summary or outline of a longer work. As an adjective applied to writing or literary works, abstract refers to words or phrases that name things not knowable through the five senses. Accent: The emphasis or stress placed on a syllable in poetry. Traditional poetry commonly uses patterns of accented and unaccented syllables (known as feet) that create distinct rhythms. Much modern poetry uses less formal arrangements that create a sense of freedom and spontaneity.
its inner qualities as a created object, or what it ‘‘is.’’ Age of Johnson: The period in English literature between 1750 and 1798, named after the most prominent literary figure of the age, Samuel Johnson. Works written during this time are noted for their emphasis on ‘‘sensibility,’’ or emotional quality. These works formed a transition between the rational works of the Age of Reason, or Neoclassical period, and the emphasis on individual feelings and responses of the Romantic period. Age of Reason: See Neoclassicism
Aestheticism: A literary and artistic movement of the nineteenth century. Followers of the movement believed that art should not be mixed with social, political, or moral teaching. The statement ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ is a good summary of aestheticism. The movement had its roots in France, but it gained widespread importance in England in the last half of the nineteenth century, where it helped change the Victorian practice of including moral lessons in literature.
Age of Sensibility: See Age of Johnson
Affective Fallacy: An error in judging the merits or faults of a work of literature. The ‘‘error’’ results from stressing the importance of the work’s effect upon the reader—that is, how it makes a reader ‘‘feel’’ emotionally, what it does as a literary work—instead of stressing
Allegory: A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to teach moral, ethical, or religious lessons but is sometimes used for satiric or political purposes.
Agrarians: A group of Southern American writers of the 1930s and 1940s who fostered an economic and cultural program for the South based on agriculture, in opposition to the industrial society of the North. The term can refer to any group that promotes the value of farm life and agricultural society. Alexandrine Meter: See Meter
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Alliteration: A poetic device where the first consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in words or syllables are repeated. Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea more easily understood. Amerind Literature: The writing and oral traditions of Native Americans. Native American literature was originally passed on by word of mouth, so it consisted largely of stories and events that were easily memorized. Amerind prose is often rhythmic like poetry because it was recited to the beat of a ceremonial drum. Analogy: A comparison of two things made to explain something unfamiliar through its similarities to something familiar, or to prove one point based on the acceptedness of another. Similes and metaphors are types of analogies. Anapest: See Foot Angry Young Men: A group of British writers of the 1950s whose work expressed bitterness and disillusionment with society. Common to their work is an anti-hero who rebels against a corrupt social order and strives for personal integrity. Anthropomorphism: The presentation of animals or objects in human shape or with human characteristics. The term is derived from the Greek word for ‘‘human form.’’ Antimasque: See Masque Antithesis: The antithesis of something is its direct opposite. In literature, the use of antithesis as a figure of speech results in two statements that show a contrast through the balancing of two opposite ideas. Technically, it is the second portion of the statement that is defined as the ‘‘antithesis’’; the first portion is the ‘‘thesis.’’ Apocrypha: Writings tentatively attributed to an author but not proven or universally accepted to be their works. The term was originally applied to certain books of the Bible that were not considered inspired and so were not included in the ‘‘sacred canon.’’ Apollonian and Dionysian: The two impulses believed to guide authors of dramatic tragedy. The Apollonian impulse is named after Apollo, the Greek god of light and beauty and the symbol of intellectual order. The
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Dionysian impulse is named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and the symbol of the unrestrained forces of nature. The Apollonian impulse is to create a rational, harmonious world, while the Dionysian is to express the irrational forces of personality. Apostrophe: A statement, question, or request addressed to an inanimate object or concept or to a nonexistent or absent person. Archetype: The word archetype is commonly used to describe an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made. This term was introduced to literary criticism from the psychology of Carl Jung. It expresses Jung’s theory that behind every person’s ‘‘unconscious,’’ or repressed memories of the past, lies the ‘‘collective unconscious’’ of the human race: memories of the countless typical experiences of our ancestors. These memories are said to prompt illogical associations that trigger powerful emotions in the reader. Often, the emotional process is primitive, even primordial. Archetypes are the literary images that grow out of the ‘‘collective unconscious.’’ They appear in literature as incidents and plots that repeat basic patterns of life. They may also appear as stereotyped characters. Argument: The argument of a work is the author’s subject matter or principal idea. Art for Art’s Sake: See Aestheticism Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in poetry. Audience: The people for whom a piece of literature is written. Authors usually write with a certain audience in mind, for example, children, members of a religious or ethnic group, or colleagues in a professional field. The term ‘‘audience’’ also applies to the people who gather to see or hear any performance, including plays, poetry readings, speeches, and concerts. Automatic Writing: Writing carried out without a preconceived plan in an effort to capture every random thought. Authors who engage in automatic writing typically do not revise their work, preferring instead to preserve the revealed truth and beauty of spontaneous expression. Avant-garde: A French term meaning ‘‘vanguard.’’ It is used in literary criticism to
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describe new writing that rejects traditional approaches to literature in favor of innovations in style or content.
B Ballad: A short poem that tells a simple story and has a repeated refrain. Ballads were originally intended to be sung. Early ballads, known as folk ballads, were passed down through generations, so their authors are often unknown. Later ballads composed by known authors are called literary ballads. Baroque: A term used in literary criticism to describe literature that is complex or ornate in style or diction. Baroque works typically express tension, anxiety, and violent emotion. The term ‘‘Baroque Age’’ designates a period in Western European literature beginning in the late sixteenth century and ending about one hundred years later. Works of this period often mirror the qualities of works more generally associated with the label ‘‘baroque’’ and sometimes feature elaborate conceits. Baroque Age: See Baroque Baroque Period: See Baroque Beat Generation: See Beat Movement Beat Movement: A period featuring a group of American poets and novelists of the 1950s and 1960s—including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti— who rejected established social and literary values. Using such techniques as stream of consciousness writing and jazz-influenced free verse and focusing on unusual or abnormal states of mind—generated by religious ecstasy or the use of drugs—the Beat writers aimed to create works that were unconventional in both form and subject matter. Beat Poets: See Beat Movement Beats, The: See Beat Movement Belles- lettres: A French term meaning ‘‘fine letters’’ or ‘‘beautiful writing.’’ It is often used as a synonym for literature, typically referring to imaginative and artistic rather than scientific or expository writing. Current usage sometimes restricts the meaning to light or humorous writing and appreciative essays about literature. Black Aesthetic Movement: A period of artistic and literary development among African
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Americans in the 1960s and early 1970s. This was the first major African-American artistic movement since the Harlem Renaissance and was closely paralleled by the civil rights and black power movements. The black aesthetic writers attempted to produce works of art that would be meaningful to the black masses. Key figures in black aesthetics included one of its founders, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones; poet and essayist Haki R. Madhubuti, formerly Don L. Lee; poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez; and dramatist Ed Bullins. Black Arts Movement: See Black Aesthetic Movement Black Comedy: See Black Humor Black Humor: Writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the reader, forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. Black Mountain School: Black Mountain College and three of its instructors—Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson—were all influential in projective verse, so poets working in projective verse are now referred as members of the Black Mountain school. Blank Verse: Loosely, any unrhymed poetry, but more generally, unrhymed iambic pentameter verse (composed of lines of five twosyllable feet with the first syllable accented, the second unaccented). Blank verse has been used by poets since the Renaissance for its flexibility and its graceful, dignified tone. Bloomsbury Group: A group of English writers, artists, and intellectuals who held informal artistic and philosophical discussions in Bloomsbury, a district of London, from around 1907 to the early 1930s. The Bloomsbury Group held no uniform philosophical beliefs but did commonly express an aversion to moral prudery and a desire for greater social tolerance. Bon Mot: A French term meaning ‘‘good word.’’ A bon mot is a witty remark or clever observation. Breath Verse: See Projective Verse Burlesque: Any literary work that uses exaggeration to make its subject appear ridiculous, either by treating a trivial subject with
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profound seriousness or by treating a dignified subject frivolously. The word ‘‘burlesque’’ may also be used as an adjective, as in ‘‘burlesque show,’’ to mean ‘‘striptease act.’’
C Cadence: The natural rhythm of language caused by the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables. Much modern poetry— notably free verse—deliberately manipulates cadence to create complex rhythmic effects.
‘‘Characterization’’ is the process by which an author creates vivid, believable characters in a work of art. This may be done in a variety of ways, including (1) direct description of the character by the narrator; (2) the direct presentation of the speech, thoughts, or actions of the character; and (3) the responses of other characters to the character. The term ‘‘character’’ also refers to a form originated by the ancient Greek writer Theophrastus that later became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a short essay or sketch of a person who prominently displays a specific attribute or quality, such as miserliness or ambition.
Caesura: A pause in a line of poetry, usually occurring near the middle. It typically corresponds to a break in the natural rhythm or sense of the line but is sometimes shifted to create special meanings or rhythmic effects.
Characterization: See Character
Canzone: A short Italian or Provencal lyric poem, commonly about love and often set to music. The canzone has no set form but typically contains five or six stanzas made up of seven to twenty lines of eleven syllables each. A shorter, five- to ten-line ‘‘envoy,’’ or concluding stanza, completes the poem.
Classical: In its strictest definition in literary criticism, classicism refers to works of ancient Greek or Roman literature. The term may also be used to describe a literary work of recognized importance (a ‘‘classic’’) from any time period or literature that exhibits the traits of classicism.
Carpe Diem: A Latin term meaning ‘‘seize the day.’’ This is a traditional theme of poetry, especially lyrics. A carpe diem poem advises the reader or the person it addresses to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment. Catharsis: The release or purging of unwanted emotions—specifically fear and pity— brought about by exposure to art. The term was first used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics to refer to the desired effect of tragedy on spectators. Celtic Renaissance: A period of Irish literary and cultural history at the end of the nineteenth century. Followers of the movement aimed to create a romantic vision of Celtic myth and legend. The most significant works of the Celtic Renaissance typically present a dreamy, unreal world, usually in reaction against the reality of contemporary problems.
Classicism: A term used in literary criticism to describe critical doctrines that have their roots in ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and art. Works associated with classicism typically exhibit restraint on the part of the author, unity of design and purpose, clarity, simplicity, logical organization, and respect for tradition. Colloquialism: A word, phrase, or form of pronunciation that is acceptable in casual conversation but not in formal, written communication. It is considered more acceptable than slang.
Celtic Twilight: See Celtic Renaissance
Complaint: A lyric poem, popular in the Renaissance, in which the speaker expresses sorrow about his or her condition. Typically, the speaker’s sadness is caused by an unresponsive lover, but some complaints cite other sources of unhappiness, such as poverty or fate.
Character: Broadly speaking, a person in a literary work. The actions of characters are what constitute the plot of a story, novel, or poem. There are numerous types of characters, ranging from simple, stereotypical figures to intricate, multifaceted ones. In the techniques of anthropomorphism and personification, animals—and even places or things—can assume aspects of character.
Conceit: A clever and fanciful metaphor, usually expressed through elaborate and extended comparison, that presents a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things— for example, elaborately comparing a beautiful woman to an object like a garden or the sun. The conceit was a popular device throughout the Elizabethan Age and Baroque Age and was the principal technique of
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the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poets. This usage of the word conceit is unrelated to the best-known definition of conceit as an arrogant attitude or behavior. Concrete: Concrete is the opposite of abstract, and refers to a thing that actually exists or a description that allows the reader to experience an object or concept with the senses. Concrete Poetry: Poetry in which visual elements play a large part in the poetic effect. Punctuation marks, letters, or words are arranged on a page to form a visual design: a cross, for example, or a bumblebee. Confessional Poetry: A form of poetry in which the poet reveals very personal, intimate, sometimes shocking information about himself or herself. Connotation: The impression that a word gives beyond its defined meaning. Connotations may be universally understood or may be significant only to a certain group. Consonance: Consonance occurs in poetry when words appearing at the ends of two or more verses have similar final consonant sounds but have final vowel sounds that differ, as with ‘‘stuff’’ and ‘‘off.’’ Convention: Any widely accepted literary device, style, or form. Corrido: A Mexican ballad. Couplet: Two lines of poetry with the same rhyme and meter, often expressing a complete and self-contained thought. Criticism: The systematic study and evaluation of literary works, usually based on a specific method or set of principles. An important part of literary studies since ancient times, the practice of criticism has given rise to numerous theories, methods, and ‘‘schools,’’ sometimes producing conflicting, even contradictory, interpretations of literature in general as well as of individual works. Even such basic issues as what constitutes a poem or a novel have been the subject of much criticism over the centuries.
D Dactyl: See Foot Dadaism: A protest movement in art and literature founded by Tristan Tzara in 1916. Followers of the movement expressed their outrage at the destruction brought about by
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World War I by revolting against numerous forms of social convention. The Dadaists presented works marked by calculated madness and flamboyant nonsense. They stressed total freedom of expression, commonly through primitive displays of emotion and illogical, often senseless, poetry. The movement ended shortly after the war, when it was replaced by surrealism. Decadent: See Decadents Decadents: The followers of a nineteenth-century literary movement that had its beginnings in French aestheticism. Decadent literature displays a fascination with perverse and morbid states; a search for novelty and sensation—the ‘‘new thrill’’; a preoccupation with mysticism; and a belief in the senselessness of human existence. The movement is closely associated with the doctrine Art for Art’s Sake. The term ‘‘decadence’’ is sometimes used to denote a decline in the quality of art or literature following a period of greatness. Deconstruction: A method of literary criticism developed by Jacques Derrida and characterized by multiple conflicting interpretations of a given work. Deconstructionists consider the impact of the language of a work and suggest that the true meaning of the work is not necessarily the meaning that the author intended. Deduction: The process of reaching a conclusion through reasoning from general premises to a specific premise. Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in the reader. Diction: The selection and arrangement of words in a literary work. Either or both may vary depending on the desired effect. There are four general types of diction: ‘‘formal,’’ used in scholarly or lofty writing; ‘‘informal,’’ used in relaxed but educated conversation; ‘‘colloquial,’’ used in everyday speech; and ‘‘slang,’’ containing newly coined words and other terms not accepted in formal usage. Didactic: A term used to describe works of literature that aim to teach some moral, religious, political, or practical lesson. Although didactic elements are often found in artistically pleasing works, the term ‘‘didactic’’ usually refers to literature in which the message is
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more important than the form. The term may also be used to criticize a work that the critic finds ‘‘overly didactic,’’ that is, heavy-handed in its delivery of a lesson. Dimeter: See Meter Dionysian: See Apollonian and Dionysian Discordia concours: A Latin phrase meaning ‘‘discord in harmony.’’ The term was coined by the eighteenth-century English writer Samuel Johnson to describe ‘‘a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.’’ Johnson created the expression by reversing a phrase by the Latin poet Horace.
Edwardian: Describes cultural conventions identified with the period of the reign of Edward VII of England (1901-1910). Writers of the Edwardian Age typically displayed a strong reaction against the propriety and conservatism of the Victorian Age. Their work often exhibits distrust of authority in religion, politics, and art and expresses strong doubts about the soundness of conventional values. Edwardian Age: See Edwardian
Dissonance: A combination of harsh or jarring sounds, especially in poetry. Although such combinations may be accidental, poets sometimes intentionally make them to achieve particular effects. Dissonance is also sometimes used to refer to close but not identical rhymes. When this is the case, the word functions as a synonym for consonance.
Electra Complex: A daughter’s amorous obsession with her father.
Double Entendre: A corruption of a French phrase meaning ‘‘double meaning.’’ The term is used to indicate a word or phrase that is deliberately ambiguous, especially when one of the meanings is risque or improper.
Elizabethan Age: A period of great economic growth, religious controversy, and nationalism closely associated with the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558-1603). The Elizabethan Age is considered a part of the general renaissance—that is, the flowering of arts and literature—that took place in Europe during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The era is considered the golden age of English literature. The most important dramas in English and a great deal of lyric poetry were produced during this period, and modern English criticism began around this time.
Draft: Any preliminary version of a written work. An author may write dozens of drafts which are revised to form the final work, or he or she may write only one, with few or no revisions. Dramatic Monologue: See Monologue Dramatic Poetry: Any lyric work that employs elements of drama such as dialogue, conflict, or characterization, but excluding works that are intended for stage presentation. Dream Allegory: See Dream Vision Dream Vision: A literary convention, chiefly of the Middle Ages. In a dream vision a story is presented as a literal dream of the narrator. This device was commonly used to teach moral and religious lessons.
E Eclogue: In classical literature, a poem featuring rural themes and structured as a dialogue among shepherds. Eclogues often took specific poetic forms, such as elegies or love poems. Some were written as the soliloquy
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of a shepherd. In later centuries, ‘‘eclogue’’ came to refer to any poem that was in the pastoral tradition or that had a dialogue or monologue structure.
Elegy: A lyric poem that laments the death of a person or the eventual death of all people. In a conventional elegy, set in a classical world, the poet and subject are spoken of as shepherds. In modern criticism, the word elegy is often used to refer to a poem that is melancholy or mournfully contemplative.
Empathy: A sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself. Empathy is often used to describe the response of a reader to a literary character. English Sonnet: See Sonnet Enjambment: The running over of the sense and structure of a line of verse or a couplet into the following verse or couplet. Enlightenment, The: An eighteenth-century philosophical movement. It began in France but had a wide impact throughout Europe and America. Thinkers of the Enlightenment valued reason and believed that both the individual and society could achieve a state
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of perfection. Corresponding to this essentially humanist vision was a resistance to religious authority.
Epic Simile: See Homeric Simile Epigram: A saying that makes the speaker’s point quickly and concisely.
Epiphany: A sudden revelation of truth inspired by a seemingly trivial incident. Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb or tombstone, or a verse written on the occasion of a person’s death. Epitaphs may be serious or humorous. Epithalamion: A song or poem written to honor and commemorate a marriage ceremony. Epithalamium: See Epithalamion Epithet: A word or phrase, often disparaging or abusive, that expresses a character trait of someone or something. Erziehungsroman: See Bildungsroman Essay: A prose composition with a focused subject of discussion. The term was coined by Michel de Montaigne to describe his 1580 collection of brief, informal reflections on himself and on various topics relating to human nature. An essay can also be a long, systematic discourse. Existentialism: A predominantly twentieth-century philosophy concerned with the nature and perception of human existence. There are two major strains of existentialist thought: atheistic and Christian. Followers of atheistic existentialism believe that the individual is alone in a godless universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless,
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because there are no fixed values, individuals can create their own characters—indeed, they can shape themselves—through the exercise of free will. The atheistic strain culminates in and is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Christian existentialists, on the other hand, believe that only in God may people find freedom from life’s anguish. The two strains hold certain beliefs in common: that existence cannot be fully understood or described through empirical effort; that anguish is a universal element of life; that individuals must bear responsibility for their actions; and that there is no common standard of behavior or perception for religious and ethical matters.
Epic: A long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero of great historic or legendary importance. The setting is vast and the action is often given cosmic significance through the intervention of supernatural forces such as gods, angels, or demons. Epics are typically written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate metaphors and allusions that enhance the symbolic importance of a hero’s adventures.
Epilogue: A concluding statement or section of a literary work. In dramas, particularly those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the epilogue is a closing speech, often in verse, delivered by an actor at the end of a play and spoken directly to the audience.
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Expatriates: See Expatriatism Expatriatism: The practice of leaving one’s country to live for an extended period in another country. Exposition: Writing intended to explain the nature of an idea, thing, or theme. Expository writing is often combined with description, narration, or argument. In dramatic writing, the exposition is the introductory material which presents the characters, setting, and tone of the play. Expressionism: An indistinct literary term, originally used to describe an early twentiethcentury school of German painting. The term applies to almost any mode of unconventional, highly subjective writing that distorts reality in some way. Extended Monologue: See Monologue
F Feet: See Foot Feminine Rhyme: See Rhyme Fiction: Any story that is the product of imagination rather than a documentation of fact. Characters and events in such narratives may be based in real life but their ultimate form and configuration is a creation of the author. Figurative Language: A technique in writing in which the author temporarily interrupts the order, construction, or meaning of the writing for a particular effect. This interruption takes the form of one or more figures of speech such as hyperbole, irony, or simile. Figurative language is the opposite of literal
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language, in which every word is truthful, accurate, and free of exaggeration or embellishment. Figures of Speech: Writing that differs from customary conventions for construction, meaning, order, or significance for the purpose of a special meaning or effect. There are two major types of figures of speech: rhetorical figures, which do not make changes in the meaning of the words, and tropes, which do. Fin de siecle: A French term meaning ‘‘end of the century.’’ The term is used to denote the last decade of the nineteenth century, a transition period when writers and other artists abandoned old conventions and looked for new techniques and objectives. First Person: See Point of View Folk Ballad: See Ballad Folklore: Traditions and myths preserved in a culture or group of people. Typically, these are passed on by word of mouth in various forms—such as legends, songs, and proverbs—or preserved in customs and ceremonies. This term was first used by W. J. Thoms in 1846. Folktale: A story originating in oral tradition. Folktales fall into a variety of categories, including legends, ghost stories, fairy tales, fables, and anecdotes based on historical figures and events. Foot: The smallest unit of rhythm in a line of poetry. In English-language poetry, a foot is typically one accented syllable combined with one or two unaccented syllables. Form: The pattern or construction of a work which identifies its genre and distinguishes it from other genres. Formalism: In literary criticism, the belief that literature should follow prescribed rules of construction, such as those that govern the sonnet form. Fourteener Meter: See Meter Free Verse: Poetry that lacks regular metrical and rhyme patterns but that tries to capture the cadences of everyday speech. The form allows a poet to exploit a variety of rhythmical effects within a single poem. Futurism: A flamboyant literary and artistic movement that developed in France, Italy, and Russia from 1908 through the 1920s. Futurist theater and poetry abandoned
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traditional literary forms. In their place, followers of the movement attempted to achieve total freedom of expression through bizarre imagery and deformed or newly invented words. The Futurists were selfconsciously modern artists who attempted to incorporate the appearances and sounds of modern life into their work.
G Genre: A category of literary work. In critical theory, genre may refer to both the content of a given work—tragedy, comedy, pastoral— and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama. Genteel Tradition: A term coined by critic George Santayana to describe the literary practice of certain late nineteenth- century American writers, especially New Englanders. Followers of the Genteel Tradition emphasized conventionality in social, religious, moral, and literary standards. Georgian Age: See Georgian Poets Georgian Period: See Georgian Poets Georgian Poets: A loose grouping of English poets during the years 1912-1922. The Georgians reacted against certain literary schools and practices, especially Victorian wordiness, turn-of-the-century aestheticism, and contemporary urban realism. In their place, the Georgians embraced the nineteenth-century poetic practices of William Wordsworth and the other Lake Poets. Georgic: A poem about farming and the farmer’s way of life, named from Virgil’s Georgics. Gilded Age: A period in American history during the 1870s characterized by political corruption and materialism. A number of important novels of social and political criticism were written during this time. Gothic: See Gothicism Gothicism: In literary criticism, works characterized by a taste for the medieval or morbidly attractive. A gothic novel prominently features elements of horror, the supernatural, gloom, and violence: clanking chains, terror, charnel houses, ghosts, medieval castles, and mysteriously slamming doors. The term ‘‘gothic novel’’ is also applied to novels that lack elements of the traditional Gothic setting but that create a similar atmosphere of terror or dread.
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Graveyard School: A group of eighteenthcentury English poets who wrote long, picturesque meditations on death. Their works were designed to cause the reader to ponder immortality. Great Chain of Being: The belief that all things and creatures in nature are organized in a hierarchy from inanimate objects at the bottom to God at the top. This system of belief was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Grotesque: In literary criticism, the subject matter of a work or a style of expression characterized by exaggeration, deformity, freakishness, and disorder. The grotesque often includes an element of comic absurdity.
H Haiku: The shortest form of Japanese poetry, constructed in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. The message of a haiku poem usually centers on some aspect of spirituality and provokes an emotional response in the reader. Half Rhyme: See Consonance Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is generally considered the first significant movement of black writers and artists in the United States. During this period, new and established black writers published more fiction and poetry than ever before, the first influential black literary journals were established, and black authors and artists received their first widespread recognition and serious critical appraisal. Among the major writers associated with this period are Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston. Hellenism: Imitation of ancient Greek thought or styles. Also, an approach to life that focuses on the growth and development of the intellect. ‘‘Hellenism’’ is sometimes used to refer to the belief that reason can be applied to examine all human experience. Heptameter: See Meter Hero/Heroine: The principal sympathetic character (male or female) in a literary work. Heroes and heroines typically exhibit admirable traits: idealism, courage, and integrity, for example.
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Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a verse with five iambic feet). Heroic Line: The meter and length of a line of verse in epic or heroic poetry. This varies by language and time period. Heroine: See Hero/Heroine Hexameter: See Meter Historical Criticism: The study of a work based on its impact on the world of the time period in which it was written. Hokku: See Haiku Holocaust: See Holocaust Literature Holocaust Literature: Literature influenced by or written about the Holocaust of World War II. Such literature includes true stories of survival in concentration camps, escape, and life after the war, as well as fictional works and poetry. Homeric Simile: An elaborate, detailed comparison written as a simile many lines in length. Horatian Satire: See Satire Humanism: A philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the medieval perception of the individual as a weak, fallen creature. ‘‘Humanists’’ typically believe in the perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means to that end. Humors: Mentions of the humors refer to the ancient Greek theory that a person’s health and personality were determined by the balance of four basic fluids in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. A dominance of any fluid would cause extremes in behavior. An excess of blood created a sanguine person who was joyful, aggressive, and passionate; a phlegmatic person was shy, fearful, and sluggish; too much yellow bile led to a choleric temperament characterized by impatience, anger, bitterness, and stubbornness; and excessive black bile created melancholy, a state of laziness, gluttony, and lack of motivation. Humours: See Humors Hyperbole: In literary criticism, deliberate exaggeration used to achieve an effect.
I Iamb: See Foot Idiom: A word construction or verbal expression closely associated with a given language.
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Image: A concrete representation of an object or sensory experience. Typically, such a representation helps evoke the feelings associated with the object or experience itself. Images are either ‘‘literal’’ or ‘‘figurative.’’ Literal images are especially concrete and involve little or no extension of the obvious meaning of the words used to express them. Figurative images do not follow the literal meaning of the words exactly. Images in literature are usually visual, but the term ‘‘image’’ can also refer to the representation of any sensory experience. Imagery: The array of images in a literary work. Also, figurative language. Imagism: An English and American poetry movement that flourished between 1908 and 1917. The Imagists used precise, clearly presented images in their works. They also used common, everyday speech and aimed for conciseness, concrete imagery, and the creation of new rhythms. In medias res: A Latin term meaning ‘‘in the middle of things.’’ It refers to the technique of beginning a story at its midpoint and then using various flashback devices to reveal previous action. Induction: The process of reaching a conclusion by reasoning from specific premises to form a general premise. Also, an introductory portion of a work of literature, especially a play. Intentional Fallacy: The belief that judgments of a literary work based solely on an author’s stated or implied intentions are false and misleading. Critics who believe in the concept of the intentional fallacy typically argue that the work itself is sufficient matter for interpretation, even though they may concede that an author’s statement of purpose can be useful. Interior Monologue: A narrative technique in which characters’ thoughts are revealed in a way that appears to be uncontrolled by the author. The interior monologue typically aims to reveal the inner self of a character. It portrays emotional experiences as they occur at both a conscious and unconscious level. Images are often used to represent sensations or emotions. Internal Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a single line of verse.
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Irish Literary Renaissance: A late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century movement in Irish literature. Members of the movement aimed to reduce the influence of British culture in Ireland and create an Irish national literature. Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the opposite of what is stated. Italian Sonnet: See Sonnet
J Jacobean Age: The period of the reign of James I of England (1603-1625). The early literature of this period reflected the worldview of the Elizabethan Age, but a darker, more cynical attitude steadily grew in the art and literature of the Jacobean Age. This was an important time for English drama and poetry. Jargon: Language that is used or understood only by a select group of people. Jargon may refer to terminology used in a certain profession, such as computer jargon, or it may refer to any nonsensical language that is not understood by most people. Journalism: Writing intended for publication in a newspaper or magazine, or for broadcast on a radio or television program featuring news, sports, entertainment, or other timely material.
K Knickerbocker Group: A somewhat indistinct group of New York writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Members of the group were linked only by location and a common theme: New York life. Kunstlerroman: See Bildungsroman
L Lais: See Lay Lake Poets: See Lake School Lake School: These poets all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single ‘‘school’’ of thought or literary practice, although their works were uniformly disparaged by the Edinburgh Review. Lay: A song or simple narrative poem. The form originated in medieval France. Early French lais were often based on the Celtic legends and other tales sung by Breton minstrels—thus
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the name of the ‘‘Breton lay.’’ In fourteenthcentury England, the term ‘‘lay’’ was used to describe short narratives written in imitation of the Breton lays. Leitmotiv: See Motif Literal Language: An author uses literal language when he or she writes without exaggerating or embellishing the subject matter and without any tools of figurative language. Literary Ballad: See Ballad Literature: Literature is broadly defined as any written or spoken material, but the term most often refers to creative works. Lost Generation: A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. Lyric Poetry: A poem expressing the subjective feelings and personal emotions of the poet. Such poetry is melodic, since it was originally accompanied by a lyre in recitals. Most Western poetry in the twentieth century may be classified as lyrical.
M Mannerism: Exaggerated, artificial adherence to a literary manner or style. Also, a popular style of the visual arts of late sixteenth-century Europe that was marked by elongation of the human form and by intentional spatial distortion. Literary works that are self-consciously high-toned and artistic are often said to be ‘‘mannered.’’ Masculine Rhyme: See Rhyme Measure: The foot, verse, or time sequence used in a literary work, especially a poem. Measure is often used somewhat incorrectly as a synonym for meter. Metaphor: A figure of speech that expresses an idea through the image of another object. Metaphors suggest the essence of the first object by identifying it with certain qualities of the second object. Metaphysical Conceit: See Conceit Metaphysical Poetry: The body of poetry produced by a group of seventeenth-century English writers called the ‘‘Metaphysical Poets.’’ The group includes John Donne and Andrew Marvell. The Metaphysical Poets made use of
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everyday speech, intellectual analysis, and unique imagery. They aimed to portray the ordinary conflicts and contradictions of life. Their poems often took the form of an argument, and many of them emphasize physical and religious love as well as the fleeting nature of life. Elaborate conceits are typical in metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical Poets: See Metaphysical Poetry Meter: In literary criticism, the repetition of sound patterns that creates a rhythm in poetry. The patterns are based on the number of syllables and the presence and absence of accents. The unit of rhythm in a line is called a foot. Types of meter are classified according to the number of feet in a line. These are the standard English lines: Monometer, one foot; Dimeter, two feet; Trimeter, three feet; Tetrameter, four feet; Pentameter, five feet; Hexameter, six feet (also called the Alexandrine); Heptameter, seven feet (also called the ‘‘Fourteener’’ when the feet are iambic). Modernism: Modern literary practices. Also, the principles of a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of World War II. Modernism is defined by its rejection of the literary conventions of the nineteenth century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste, traditions, and economic values. Monologue: A composition, written or oral, by a single individual. More specifically, a speech given by a single individual in a drama or other public entertainment. It has no set length, although it is usually several or more lines long. Monometer: See Meter Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter. Motif: A theme, character type, image, metaphor, or other verbal element that recurs throughout a single work of literature or occurs in a number of different works over a period of time. Motiv: See Motif Muckrakers: An early twentieth-century group of American writers. Typically, their works exposed the wrongdoings of big business and government in the United States.
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Muses: Nine Greek mythological goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). Each muse patronized a specific area of the liberal arts and sciences. Calliope presided over epic poetry, Clio over history, Erato over love poetry, Euterpe over music or lyric poetry, Melpomene over tragedy, Polyhymnia over hymns to the gods, Terpsichore over dance, Thalia over comedy, and Urania over astronomy. Poets and writers traditionally made appeals to the Muses for inspiration in their work. Myth: An anonymous tale emerging from the traditional beliefs of a culture or social unit. Myths use supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. They may also explain cosmic issues like creation and death. Collections of myths, known as mythologies, are common to all cultures and nations, but the best-known myths belong to the Norse, Roman, and Greek mythologies.
N Narration: The telling of a series of events, real or invented. A narration may be either a simple narrative, in which the events are recounted chronologically, or a narrative with a plot, in which the account is given in a style reflecting the author’s artistic concept of the story. Narration is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘‘storyline.’’ Narrative: A verse or prose accounting of an event or sequence of events, real or invented. The term is also used as an adjective in the sense ‘‘method of narration.’’ For example, in literary criticism, the expression ‘‘narrative technique’’ usually refers to the way the author structures and presents his or her story. Narrative Poetry: A nondramatic poem in which the author tells a story. Such poems may be of any length or level of complexity. Narrator: The teller of a story. The narrator may be the author or a character in the story through whom the author speaks. Naturalism: A literary movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The movement’s major theorist, French novelist Emile Zola, envisioned a type of fiction that would examine human life with the objectivity of scientific inquiry. The Naturalists typically viewed human beings as either the
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products of ‘‘biological determinism,’’ ruled by hereditary instincts and engaged in an endless struggle for survival, or as the products of ‘‘socioeconomic determinism,’’ ruled by social and economic forces beyond their control. In their works, the Naturalists generally ignored the highest levels of society and focused on degradation: poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, insanity, and disease. Negritude: A literary movement based on the concept of a shared cultural bond on the part of black Africans, wherever they may be in the world. It traces its origins to the former French colonies of Africa and the Caribbean. Negritude poets, novelists, and essayists generally stress four points in their writings: One, black alienation from traditional African culture can lead to feelings of inferiority. Two, European colonialism and Western education should be resisted. Three, black Africans should seek to affirm and define their own identity. Four, African culture can and should be reclaimed. Many Negritude writers also claim that blacks can make unique contributions to the world, based on a heightened appreciation of nature, rhythm, and human emotions—aspects of life they say are not so highly valued in the materialistic and rationalistic West. Negro Renaissance: See Harlem Renaissance Neoclassical Period: See Neoclassicism Neoclassicism: In literary criticism, this term refers to the revival of the attitudes and styles of expression of classical literature. It is generally used to describe a period in European history beginning in the late seventeenth century and lasting until about 1800. In its purest form, Neoclassicism marked a return to order, proportion, restraint, logic, accuracy, and decorum. In England, where Neoclassicism perhaps was most popular, it reflected the influence of seventeenth- century French writers, especially dramatists. Neoclassical writers typically reacted against the intensity and enthusiasm of the Renaissance period. They wrote works that appealed to the intellect, using elevated language and classical literary forms such as satire and the ode. Neoclassical works were often governed by the classical goal of instruction. Neoclassicists: See Neoclassicism
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New Criticism: A movement in literary criticism, dating from the late 1920s, that stressed close textual analysis in the interpretation of works of literature. The New Critics saw little merit in historical and biographical analysis. Rather, they aimed to examine the text alone, free from the question of how external events— biographical or otherwise—may have helped shape it.
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theme. Most odes, but not all, are addressed to an object or individual. Odes are distinguished from other lyric poetic forms by their complex rhythmic and stanzaic patterns. Oedipus Complex: A son’s amorous obsession with his mother. The phrase is derived from the story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother.
New Journalism: A type of writing in which the journalist presents factual information in a form usually used in fiction. New journalism emphasizes description, narration, and character development to bring readers closer to the human element of the story, and is often used in personality profiles and in-depth feature articles. It is not compatible with ‘‘straight’’ or ‘‘hard’’ newswriting, which is generally composed in a brief, fact-based style.
Omniscience: See Point of View
New Journalists: See New Journalism
Oral Tradition: See Oral Transmission
New Negro Movement: See Harlem Renaissance
Oral Transmission: A process by which songs, ballads, folklore, and other material are transmitted by word of mouth. The tradition of oral transmission predates the written record systems of literate society. Oral transmission preserves material sometimes over generations, although often with variations. Memory plays a large part in the recitation and preservation of orally transmitted material.
Noble Savage: The idea that primitive man is noble and good but becomes evil and corrupted as he becomes civilized. The concept of the noble savage originated in the Renaissance period but is more closely identified with such later writers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Aphra Behn.
O Objective Correlative: An outward set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events corresponding to an inward experience and evoking this experience in the reader. The term frequently appears in modern criticism in discussions of authors’ intended effects on the emotional responses of readers. Objectivity: A quality in writing characterized by the absence of the author’s opinion or feeling about the subject matter. Objectivity is an important factor in criticism. Occasional Verse: poetry written on the occasion of a significant historical or personal event. Vers de societe is sometimes called occasional verse although it is of a less serious nature. Octave: A poem or stanza composed of eight lines. The term octave most often represents the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet. Ode: Name given to an extended lyric poem characterized by exalted emotion and dignified style. An ode usually concerns a single, serious
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Onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds express or suggest their meaning. In its simplest sense, onomatopoeia may be represented by words that mimic the sounds they denote such as ‘‘hiss’’ or ‘‘meow.’’ At a more subtle level, the pattern and rhythm of sounds and rhymes of a line or poem may be onomatopoeic.
Ottava Rima: An eight-line stanza of poetry composed in iambic pentameter (a five-foot line in which each foot consists of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable), following the abababcc rhyme scheme. Oxymoron: A phrase combining two contradictory terms. Oxymorons may be intentional or unintentional.
P Pantheism: The idea that all things are both a manifestation or revelation of God and a part of God at the same time. Pantheism was a common attitude in the early societies of Egypt, India, and Greece—the term derives from the Greek pan meaning ‘‘all’’ and theos meaning ‘‘deity.’’ It later became a significant part of the Christian faith. Parable: A story intended to teach a moral lesson or answer an ethical question. Paradox: A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually point to an underlying truth.
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Parallelism: A method of comparison of two ideas in which each is developed in the same grammatical structure. Parnassianism: A mid nineteenth-century movement in French literature. Followers of the movement stressed adherence to well-defined artistic forms as a reaction against the often chaotic expression of the artist’s ego that dominated the work of the Romantics. The Parnassians also rejected the moral, ethical, and social themes exhibited in the works of French Romantics such as Victor Hugo. The aesthetic doctrines of the Parnassians strongly influenced the later symbolist and decadent movements. Parody: In literary criticism, this term refers to an imitation of a serious literary work or the signature style of a particular author in a ridiculous manner. A typical parody adopts the style of the original and applies it to an inappropriate subject for humorous effect. Parody is a form of satire and could be considered the literary equivalent of a caricature or cartoon. Pastoral: A term derived from the Latin word ‘‘pastor,’’ meaning shepherd. A pastoral is a literary composition on a rural theme. The conventions of the pastoral were originated by the third-century Greek poet Theocritus, who wrote about the experiences, love affairs, and pastimes of Sicilian shepherds. In a pastoral, characters and language of a courtly nature are often placed in a simple setting. The term pastoral is also used to classify dramas, elegies, and lyrics that exhibit the use of country settings and shepherd characters. Pathetic Fallacy: A term coined by English critic John Ruskin to identify writing that falsely endows nonhuman things with human intentions and feelings, such as ‘‘angry clouds’’ and ‘‘sad trees.’’ Pen Name: See Pseudonym Pentameter: See Meter Persona: A Latin term meaning ‘‘mask.’’ Personae are the characters in a fictional work of literature. The persona generally functions as a mask through which the author tells a story in a voice other than his or her own. A persona is usually either a character in a story who acts as a narrator or an ‘‘implied author,’’ a voice created by the author to act as the narrator for himself or herself.
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Personae: See Persona Personal Point of View: See Point of View Personification: A figure of speech that gives human qualities to abstract ideas, animals, and inanimate objects. Petrarchan Sonnet: See Sonnet Phenomenology: A method of literary criticism based on the belief that things have no existence outside of human consciousness or awareness. Proponents of this theory believe that art is a process that takes place in the mind of the observer as he or she contemplates an object rather than a quality of the object itself. Plagiarism: Claiming another person’s written material as one’s own. Plagiarism can take the form of direct, word-for-word copying or the theft of the substance or idea of the work. Platonic Criticism: A form of criticism that stresses an artistic work’s usefulness as an agent of social engineering rather than any quality or value of the work itself. Platonism: The embracing of the doctrines of the philosopher Plato, popular among the poets of the Renaissance and the Romantic period. Platonism is more flexible than Aristotelian Criticism and places more emphasis on the supernatural and unknown aspects of life. Plot: In literary criticism, this term refers to the pattern of events in a narrative or drama. In its simplest sense, the plot guides the author in composing the work and helps the reader follow the work. Typically, plots exhibit causality and unity and have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes, however, a plot may consist of a series of disconnected events, in which case it is known as an ‘‘episodic plot.’’ Poem: In its broadest sense, a composition utilizing rhyme, meter, concrete detail, and expressive language to create a literary experience with emotional and aesthetic appeal. Poet: An author who writes poetry or verse. The term is also used to refer to an artist or writer who has an exceptional gift for expression, imagination, and energy in the making of art in any form. Poete maudit: A term derived from Paul Verlaine’s Les poetes maudits (The Accursed Poets), a collection of essays on the French symbolist
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writers Stephane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, and Tristan Corbiere. In the sense intended by Verlaine, the poet is ‘‘accursed’’ for choosing to explore extremes of human experience outside of middle-class society. Poetic Fallacy: See Pathetic Fallacy Poetic Justice: An outcome in a literary work, not necessarily a poem, in which the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, especially in ways that particularly fit their virtues or crimes. Poetic License: Distortions of fact and literary convention made by a writer—not always a poet—for the sake of the effect gained. Poetic license is closely related to the concept of ‘‘artistic freedom.’’ Poetics: This term has two closely related meanings. It denotes (1) an aesthetic theory in literary criticism about the essence of poetry or (2) rules prescribing the proper methods, content, style, or diction of poetry. The term poetics may also refer to theories about literature in general, not just poetry. Poetry: In its broadest sense, writing that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery, connotative and concrete words, and a carefully constructed structure based on rhythmic patterns. Poetry typically relies on words and expressions that have several layers of meaning. It also makes use of the effects of regular rhythm on the ear and may make a strong appeal to the senses through the use of imagery. Point of View: The narrative perspective from which a literary work is presented to the reader. There are four traditional points of view. The ‘‘third person omniscient’’ gives the reader a ‘‘godlike’’ perspective, unrestricted by time or place, from which to see actions and look into the minds of characters. This allows the author to comment openly on characters and events in the work. The ‘‘third person’’ point of view presents the events of the story from outside of any single character’s perception, much like the omniscient point of view, but the reader must understand the action as it takes place and without any special insight into characters’ minds or motivations. The ‘‘first person’’ or ‘‘personal’’ point of view relates events as they are perceived by a single character. The main character ‘‘tells’’ the story
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and may offer opinions about the action and characters which differ from those of the author. Much less common than omniscient, third person, and first person is the ‘‘second person’’ point of view, wherein the author tells the story as if it is happening to the reader. Polemic: A work in which the author takes a stand on a controversial subject, such as abortion or religion. Such works are often extremely argumentative or provocative. Pornography: Writing intended to provoke feelings of lust in the reader. Such works are often condemned by critics and teachers, but those which can be shown to have literary value are viewed less harshly. Post-Aesthetic Movement: An artistic response made by African Americans to the black aesthetic movement of the 1960s and early ’70s. Writers since that time have adopted a somewhat different tone in their work, with less emphasis placed on the disparity between black and white in the United States. In the words of post-aesthetic authors such as Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and Kristin Hunter, African Americans are portrayed as looking inward for answers to their own questions, rather than always looking to the outside world. Postmodernism: Writing from the 1960s forward characterized by experimentation and continuing to apply some of the fundamentals of modernism, which included existentialism and alienation. Postmodernists have gone a step further in the rejection of tradition begun with the modernists by also rejecting traditional forms, preferring the anti-novel over the novel and the anti-hero over the hero. Pre-Raphaelites: A circle of writers and artists in mid nineteenth-century England. Valuing the pre-Renaissance artistic qualities of religious symbolism, lavish pictorialism, and natural sensuousness, the Pre-Raphaelites cultivated a sense of mystery and melancholy that influenced later writers associated with the Symbolist and Decadent movements. Primitivism: The belief that primitive peoples were nobler and less flawed than civilized peoples because they had not been subjected to the tainting influence of society. Projective Verse: A form of free verse in which the poet’s breathing pattern determines the
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lines of the poem. Poets who advocate projective verse are against all formal structures in writing, including meter and form. Prologue: An introductory section of a literary work. It often contains information establishing the situation of the characters or presents information about the setting, time period, or action. In drama, the prologue is spoken by a chorus or by one of the principal characters. Prose: A literary medium that attempts to mirror the language of everyday speech. It is distinguished from poetry by its use of unmetered, unrhymed language consisting of logically related sentences. Prose is usually grouped into paragraphs that form a cohesive whole such as an essay or a novel. Prosopopoeia: See Personification Protagonist: The central character of a story who serves as a focus for its themes and incidents and as the principal rationale for its development. The protagonist is sometimes referred to in discussions of modern literature as the hero or anti-hero. Proverb: A brief, sage saying that expresses a truth about life in a striking manner. Pseudonym: A name assumed by a writer, most often intended to prevent his or her identification as the author of a work. Two or more authors may work together under one pseudonym, or an author may use a different name for each genre he or she publishes in. Some publishing companies maintain ‘‘house pseudonyms,’’ under which any number of authors may write installations in a series. Some authors also choose a pseudonym over their real names the way an actor may use a stage name. Pun: A play on words that have similar sounds but different meanings. Pure Poetry: poetry written without instructional intent or moral purpose that aims only to please a reader by its imagery or musical flow. The term pure poetry is used as the antonym of the term ‘‘didacticism.’’
Q Quatrain: A four-line stanza of a poem or an entire poem consisting of four lines.
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R Realism: A nineteenth-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters, situations, and settings in a realistic manner. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative point of view and through the buildup of accurate detail. The standard for success of any realistic work depends on how faithfully it transfers common experience into fictional forms. The realistic method may be altered or extended, as in stream of consciousness writing, to record highly subjective experience. Refrain: A phrase repeated at intervals throughout a poem. A refrain may appear at the end of each stanza or at less regular intervals. It may be altered slightly at each appearance. Renaissance: The period in European history that marked the end of the Middle Ages. It began in Italy in the late fourteenth century. In broad terms, it is usually seen as spanning the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, although it did not reach Great Britain, for example, until the 1480s or so. The Renaissance saw an awakening in almost every sphere of human activity, especially science, philosophy, and the arts. The period is best defined by the emergence of a general philosophy that emphasized the importance of the intellect, the individual, and world affairs. It contrasts strongly with the medieval worldview, characterized by the dominant concerns of faith, the social collective, and spiritual salvation. Repartee: Conversation featuring snappy retorts and witticisms. Restoration: See Restoration Age Restoration Age: A period in English literature beginning with the crowning of Charles II in 1660 and running to about 1700. The era, which was characterized by a reaction against Puritanism, was the first great age of the comedy of manners. The finest literature of the era is typically witty and urbane, and often lewd. Rhetoric: In literary criticism, this term denotes the art of ethical persuasion. In its strictest sense, rhetoric adheres to various principles developed since classical times for arranging facts and ideas in a clear, persuasive, appealing manner. The term is also used to refer to effective prose in general and theories of or methods for composing effective prose.
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Rhetorical Question: A question intended to provoke thought, but not an expressed answer, in the reader. It is most commonly used in oratory and other persuasive genres.
Rhyme Royal: A stanza of seven lines composed in iambic pentameter and rhymed ababbcc. The name is said to be a tribute to King James I of Scotland, who made much use of the form in his poetry.
Rococo: A style of European architecture that flourished in the eighteenth century, especially in France. The most notable features of rococo are its extensive use of ornamentation and its themes of lightness, gaiety, and intimacy. In literary criticism, the term is often used disparagingly to refer to a decadent or over-ornamental style. Romance: A broad term, usually denoting a narrative with exotic, exaggerated, often idealized characters, scenes, and themes. Romantic Age: See Romanticism Romanticism: This term has two widely accepted meanings. In historical criticism, it refers to a European intellectual and artistic movement
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Romantics: See Romanticism
Rhythm: A regular pattern of sound, time intervals, or events occurring in writing, most often and most discernably in poetry. Regular, reliable rhythm is known to be soothing to humans, while interrupted, unpredictable, or rapidly changing rhythm is disturbing. These effects are known to authors, who use them to produce a desired reaction in the reader.
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of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary form and logic of the eighteenth-century neoclassicists. The Romantics preferred emotional and imaginative expression to rational analysis. They considered the individual to be at the center of all experience and so placed him or her at the center of their art. The Romantics believed that the creative imagination reveals nobler truths—unique feelings and attitudes—than those that could be discovered by logic or by scientific examination. Both the natural world and the state of childhood were important sources for revelations of ‘‘eternal truths.’’ ‘‘Romanticism’’ is also used as a general term to refer to a type of sensibility found in all periods of literary history and usually considered to be in opposition to the principles of classicism. In this sense, Romanticism signifies any work or philosophy in which the exotic or dreamlike figure strongly, or that is devoted to individualistic expression, selfanalysis, or a pursuit of a higher realm of knowledge than can be discovered by human reason.
Rhyme: When used as a noun in literary criticism, this term generally refers to a poem in which words sound identical or very similar and appear in parallel positions in two or more lines. Rhymes are classified into different types according to where they fall in a line or stanza or according to the degree of similarity they exhibit in their spellings and sounds. Some major types of rhyme are ‘‘masculine’’ rhyme, ‘‘feminine’’ rhyme, and ‘‘triple’’ rhyme. In a masculine rhyme, the rhyming sound falls in a single accented syllable, as with ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘eat.’’ Feminine rhyme is a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as with ‘‘merry’’ and ‘‘tarry.’’ Triple rhyme matches the sound of the accented syllable and the two unaccented syllables that follow: ‘‘narrative’’ and ‘‘declarative.’’
Rhyme Scheme: See Rhyme
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Russian Symbolism: A Russian poetic movement, derived from French symbolism, that flourished between 1894 and 1910. While some Russian Symbolists continued in the French tradition, stressing aestheticism and the importance of suggestion above didactic intent, others saw their craft as a form of mystical worship, and themselves as mediators between the supernatural and the mundane.
S Satire: A work that uses ridicule, humor, and wit to criticize and provoke change in human nature and institutions. There are two major types of satire: ‘‘formal’’ or ‘‘direct’’ satire speaks directly to the reader or to a character in the work; ‘‘indirect’’ satire relies upon the ridiculous behavior of its characters to make its point. Formal satire is further divided into two manners: the ‘‘Horatian,’’ which ridicules gently, and the ‘‘Juvenalian,’’ which derides its subjects harshly and bitterly. Scansion: The analysis or ‘‘scanning’’ of a poem to determine its meter and often its rhyme
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scheme. The most common system of scansion uses accents (slanted lines drawn above syllables) to show stressed syllables, breves (curved lines drawn above syllables) to show unstressed syllables, and vertical lines to separate each foot. Second Person: See Point of View Semiotics: The study of how literary forms and conventions affect the meaning of language. Sestet: Any six-line poem or stanza. Setting: The time, place, and culture in which the action of a narrative takes place. The elements of setting may include geographic location, characters’ physical and mental environments, prevailing cultural attitudes, or the historical time in which the action takes place. Shakespearean Sonnet: See Sonnet Signifying Monkey: A popular trickster figure in black folklore, with hundreds of tales about this character documented since the 19th century. Simile: A comparison, usually using ‘‘like’’ or ‘‘as,’’ of two essentially dissimilar things, as in ‘‘coffee as cold as ice’’ or ‘‘He sounded like a broken record.’’ Slang: A type of informal verbal communication that is generally unacceptable for formal writing. Slang words and phrases are often colorful exaggerations used to emphasize the speaker’s point; they may also be shortened versions of an often-used word or phrase. Slant Rhyme: See Consonance Slave Narrative: Autobiographical accounts of American slave life as told by escaped slaves. These works first appeared during the abolition movement of the 1830s through the 1850s. Social Realism: See Socialist Realism Socialist Realism: The Socialist Realism school of literary theory was proposed by Maxim Gorky and established as a dogma by the first Soviet Congress of Writers. It demanded adherence to a communist worldview in works of literature. Its doctrines required an objective viewpoint comprehensible to the working classes and themes of social struggle featuring strong proletarian heroes. Soliloquy: A monologue in a drama used to give the audience information and to develop the speaker’s character. It is typically a projection of the speaker’s innermost thoughts.
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Usually delivered while the speaker is alone on stage, a soliloquy is intended to present an illusion of unspoken reflection. Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem, usually composed in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes. There are three major types of sonnets, upon which all other variations of the form are based: the ‘‘Petrarchan’’ or ‘‘Italian’’ sonnet, the ‘‘Shakespearean’’ or ‘‘English’’ sonnet, and the ‘‘Spenserian’’ sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave rhymed abbaabba and a ‘‘sestet’’ rhymed either cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce. The octave poses a question or problem, relates a narrative, or puts forth a proposition; the sestet presents a solution to the problem, comments upon the narrative, or applies the proposition put forth in the octave. The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into three quatrains and a couplet rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet provides an epigrammatic comment on the narrative or problem put forth in the quatrains. The Spenserian sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet like the Shakespearean, but links their three rhyme schemes in this way: abab bcbc cdcd ee. The Spenserian sonnet develops its theme in two parts like the Petrarchan, its final six lines resolving a problem, analyzing a narrative, or applying a proposition put forth in its first eight lines. Spenserian Sonnet: See Sonnet Spenserian Stanza: A nine-line stanza having eight verses in iambic pentameter, its ninth verse in iambic hexameter, and the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. Spondee: In poetry meter, a foot consisting of two long or stressed syllables occurring together. This form is quite rare in English verse, and is usually composed of two monosyllabic words. Sprung Rhythm: Versification using a specific number of accented syllables per line but disregarding the number of unaccented syllables that fall in each line, producing an irregular rhythm in the poem. Stanza: A subdivision of a poem consisting of lines grouped together, often in recurring patterns of rhyme, line length, and meter. Stanzas may also serve as units of thought in a poem much like paragraphs in prose. Stereotype: A stereotype was originally the name for a duplication made during the printing
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process; this led to its modern definition as a person or thing that is (or is assumed to be) the same as all others of its type. Stream of Consciousness: A narrative technique for rendering the inward experience of a character. This technique is designed to give the impression of an ever-changing series of thoughts, emotions, images, and memories in the spontaneous and seemingly illogical order that they occur in life. Structuralism: A twentieth-century movement in literary criticism that examines how literary texts arrive at their meanings, rather than the meanings themselves. There are two major types of structuralist analysis: one examines the way patterns of linguistic structures unify a specific text and emphasize certain elements of that text, and the other interprets the way literary forms and conventions affect the meaning of language itself. Structure: The form taken by a piece of literature. The structure may be made obvious for ease of understanding, as in nonfiction works, or may obscured for artistic purposes, as in some poetry or seemingly ‘‘unstructured’’ prose. Sturm und Drang: A German term meaning ‘‘storm and stress.’’ It refers to a German literary movement of the 1770s and 1780s that reacted against the order and rationalism of the enlightenment, focusing instead on the intense experience of extraordinary individuals. Style: A writer’s distinctive manner of arranging words to suit his or her ideas and purpose in writing. The unique imprint of the author’s personality upon his or her writing, style is the product of an author’s way of arranging ideas and his or her use of diction, different sentence structures, rhythm, figures of speech, rhetorical principles, and other elements of composition. Subject: The person, event, or theme at the center of a work of literature. A work may have one or more subjects of each type, with shorter works tending to have fewer and longer works tending to have more. Subjectivity: Writing that expresses the author’s personal feelings about his subject, and which may or may not include factual information about the subject. Surrealism: A term introduced to criticism by Guillaume Apollinaire and later adopted
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by Andre Breton. It refers to a French literary and artistic movement founded in the 1920s. The Surrealists sought to express unconscious thoughts and feelings in their works. The best-known technique used for achieving this aim was automatic writing— transcriptions of spontaneous outpourings from the unconscious. The Surrealists proposed to unify the contrary levels of conscious and unconscious, dream and reality, objectivity and subjectivity into a new level of ‘‘super-realism.’’ Suspense: A literary device in which the author maintains the audience’s attention through the buildup of events, the outcome of which will soon be revealed. Syllogism: A method of presenting a logical argument. In its most basic form, the syllogism consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Symbol: Something that suggests or stands for something else without losing its original identity. In literature, symbols combine their literal meaning with the suggestion of an abstract concept. Literary symbols are of two types: those that carry complex associations of meaning no matter what their contexts, and those that derive their suggestive meaning from their functions in specific literary works. Symbolism: This term has two widely accepted meanings. In historical criticism, it denotes an early modernist literary movement initiated in France during the nineteenth century that reacted against the prevailing standards of realism. Writers in this movement aimed to evoke, indirectly and symbolically, an order of being beyond the material world of the five senses. Poetic expression of personal emotion figured strongly in the movement, typically by means of a private set of symbols uniquely identifiable with the individual poet. The principal aim of the Symbolists was to express in words the highly complex feelings that grew out of everyday contact with the world. In a broader sense, the term ‘‘symbolism’’ refers to the use of one object to represent another. Symbolist: See Symbolism Symbolist Movement: See Symbolism Sympathetic Fallacy: See Affective Fallacy
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to denote any works about the fall of persons from exalted to low conditions due to any reason: fate, vice, weakness, etc. According to the classical definition of tragedy, such works present the ‘‘pathetic’’—that which evokes pity—rather than the tragic. The classical form of tragedy was revived in the sixteenth century; it flourished especially on the Elizabethan stage. In modern times, dramatists have attempted to adapt the form to the needs of modern society by drawing their heroes from the ranks of ordinary men and women and defining the nobility of these heroes in terms of spirit rather than exalted social standing.
Tanka: A form of Japanese poetry similar to haiku. A tanka is five lines long, with the lines containing five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables respectively. Terza Rima: A three-line stanza form in poetry in which the rhymes are made on the last word of each line in the following manner: the first and third lines of the first stanza, then the second line of the first stanza and the first and third lines of the second stanza, and so on with the middle line of any stanza rhyming with the first and third lines of the following stanza. Tetrameter: See Meter Textual Criticism: A branch of literary criticism that seeks to establish the authoritative text of a literary work. Textual critics typically compare all known manuscripts or printings of a single work in order to assess the meanings of differences and revisions. This procedure allows them to arrive at a definitive version that (supposedly) corresponds to the author’s original intention. Theme: The main point of a work of literature. The term is used interchangeably with thesis. Thesis: A thesis is both an essay and the point argued in the essay. Thesis novels and thesis plays share the quality of containing a thesis which is supported through the action of the story. Third Person: See Point of View Tone: The author’s attitude toward his or her audience may be deduced from the tone of the work. A formal tone may create distance or convey politeness, while an informal tone may encourage a friendly, intimate, or intrusive feeling in the reader. The author’s attitude toward his or her subject matter may also be deduced from the tone of the words he or she uses in discussing it. Tragedy: A drama in prose or poetry about a noble, courageous hero of excellent character who, because of some tragic character flaw or hamartia, brings ruin upon him- or herself. Tragedy treats its subjects in a dignified and serious manner, using poetic language to help evoke pity and fear and bring about catharsis, a purging of these emotions. The tragic form was practiced extensively by the ancient Greeks. In the Middle Ages, when classical works were virtually unknown, tragedy came
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Tragic Flaw: In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall. Transcendentalism: An American philosophical and religious movement, based in New England from around 1835 until the Civil War. Transcendentalism was a form of American romanticism that had its roots abroad in the works of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Coleridge, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of intuition and subjective experience in communication with God. They rejected religious dogma and texts in favor of mysticism and scientific naturalism. They pursued truths that lie beyond the ‘‘colorless’’ realms perceived by reason and the senses and were active social reformers in public education, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. Trickster: A character or figure common in Native American and African literature who uses his ingenuity to defeat enemies and escape difficult situations. Tricksters are most often animals, such as the spider, hare, or coyote, although they may take the form of humans as well. Trimeter: See Meter Triple Rhyme: See Rhyme Trochee: See Foot
U Understatement: See Irony Unities: Strict rules of dramatic structure, formulated by Italian and French critics of the Renaissance and based loosely on the principles of drama discussed by Aristotle in his Poetics.
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Foremost among these rules were the three unities of action, time, and place that compelled a dramatist to: (1) construct a single plot with a beginning, middle, and end that details the causal relationships of action and character; (2) restrict the action to the events of a single day; and (3) limit the scene to a single place or city. The unities were observed faithfully by continental European writers until the Romantic Age, but they were never regularly observed in English drama. Modern dramatists are typically more concerned with a unity of impression or emotional effect than with any of the classical unities. Urban Realism: A branch of realist writing that attempts to accurately reflect the often harsh facts of modern urban existence. Utopia: A fictional perfect place, such as ‘‘paradise’’ or ‘‘heaven.’’ Utopian: See Utopia Utopianism: See Utopia
Verisimilitude: Literally, the appearance of truth. In literary criticism, the term refers to aspects of a work of literature that seem true to the reader. Vers de societe: See Occasional Verse Vers libre: See Free Verse Verse: A line of metered language, a line of a poem, or any work written in verse. Versification: The writing of verse. Versification may also refer to the meter, rhyme, and other mechanical components of a poem.
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Victorian: Refers broadly to the reign of Queen Victoria of England (1837-1901) and to anything with qualities typical of that era. For example, the qualities of smug narrowmindedness, bourgeois materialism, faith in social progress, and priggish morality are often considered Victorian. This stereotype is contradicted by such dramatic intellectual developments as the theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud (which stirred strong debates in England) and the critical attitudes of serious Victorian writers like Charles Dickens and George Eliot. In literature, the Victorian Period was the great age of the English novel, and the latter part of the era saw the rise of movements such as decadence and symbolism. Victorian Age: See Victorian Victorian Period: See Victorian
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Weltanschauung: A German term referring to a person’s worldview or philosophy. Weltschmerz: A German term meaning ‘‘world pain.’’ It describes a sense of anguish about the nature of existence, usually associated with a melancholy, pessimistic attitude.
Z Zarzuela: A type of Spanish operetta. Zeitgeist: A German term meaning ‘‘spirit of the time.’’ It refers to the moral and intellectual trends of a given era.
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Cumulative Author/Title Index A A Pie`d (McElroy): V3 Accounting (Alegrı´ a): V21 Ackerman, Diane On Location in the Loire Valley: V19 Acosta, Teresa Palomo My Mother Pieced Quilts: V12 Addonizio, Kim Knowledge: V25 Address to the Angels (Kumin): V18 After Apple Picking (Frost): V32 The Afterlife (Collins): V18 An African Elegy (Duncan): V13 After Raphael (Brock-Broido): V26 Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave? (Hardy): V4 Ai Reunions with a Ghost: V16 Aiken, Conrad The Room: V24 Air for Mercury (Hillman): V20 Akhmatova, Anna Everything is Plundered: V32 Midnight Verses: V18 Requiem: V27 Alabama Centennial (Madgett): V10 The Alchemy of Day (He´bert): V20 Alegrı´ a, Claribel Accounting: V21 Alexander, Elizabeth The Toni Morrison Dreams: V22 All I Was Doing Was Breathing (Mirabai): V24 All It Takes (Phillips): V23 Allegory (Bang): V23 Always (Apollinaire): V24 America, America (Youssef): V29
American Poetry (Simpson): V7 Amichai, Yehuda Not like a Cypress: V24 Ammons, A. R. The City Limits: V19 Anasazi (Snyder): V9 An Ancient Gesture (Millay): V31 And What If I Spoke of Despair (Bass): V19 Angelou, Maya Harlem Hopscotch: V2 On the Pulse of Morning: V3 Woman Work: V33 Angle of Geese (Momaday): V2 Annabel Lee (Poe): V9 Anniversary (Harjo): V15 Anonymous Barbara Allan: V7 Go Down, Moses: V11 Lord Randal: V6 The Seafarer: V8 Sir Patrick Spens: V4 Swing Low Sweet Chariot: V1 Anorexic (Boland): V12 Another Night in the Ruins (Kinnell): V26 Answers to Letters (Transtro¨mer): V21 An Anthem (Sanchez): V26 Any Human to Another (Cullen): V3 anyone lived in a pretty how town (cummings): V30 Apollinaire, Guillaume Always: V24 Apple sauce for Eve (Piercy): V22 Archaic Torso of Apollo (Rilke): V27 Arnold, Matthew Dover Beach: V2 Ars Poetica (MacLeish): V5
The Arsenal at Springfield (Longfellow): V17 The Art of the Novel (Saje´): V23 Art Thou the Thing I Wanted (Fulton): V25 An Arundel Tomb (Larkin): V12 Arvio, Sarah Memory: V21 As I Walked Out One Evening (Auden): V4 Ashbery, John Paradoxes and Oxymorons: V11 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: V28 Astonishment (Szymborska): V15 At the Bomb Testing Site (Stafford): V8 At the Cancer Clinic (Kooser): V24 An Attempt at Jealousy (Tsvetaeva): V29 Atwood, Margaret Siren Song: V7 Auden, W. H. As I Walked Out One Evening: V4 Funeral Blues: V10 Muse´e des Beaux Arts: V1 September 1, 1939: V27 The Unknown Citizen: V3 Aurora Leigh (Browning): V23 Auto Wreck (Shapiro): V3 Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio (Wright): V8
B Babii Yar (Yevtushenko): V29 Baggott, Julianna What the Poets Could Have Been: V26
3 2 3
C u m u l a t i v e
A u t h o r / T i t l e
Ballad of Birmingham (Randall): V5 Ballad of Orange and Grape (Rukeyser): V10 Bang, Mary Jo Allegory: V23 Baraka, Amiri In Memory of Radio: V9 Barbara Allan (Anonymous): V7 Barbarese, J. T. Walk Your Body Down: V26 Barbie Doll (Piercy): V9 Barot, Rick Bonnard’s Garden: V25 Barrett, Elizabeth Sonnet 43: V2 The Base Stealer (Francis): V12 Basho , Matsuo Falling Upon Earth: V2 The Moon Glows the Same: V7 Temple Bells Die Out: V18 Bass, Ellen And What If I Spoke of Despair: V19 Baudelaire, Charles Hymn to Beauty: V21 The Bean Eaters (Brooks): V2 Because I Could Not Stop for Death (Dickinson): V2 Bedtime Story (MacBeth): V8 Behn, Robin Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning: V21 Bell, Marvin View: V25 La Belle Dame sans Merci (Keats): V17 The Bells (Poe): V3 Beowulf (Wilbur): V11 Berry, Wendell The Peace of Wild Things: V30 Berryman, John Dream Song 29: V27 Beware: Do Not Read This Poem (Reed): V6 Beware of Ruins (Hope): V8 Bialosky, Jill Seven Seeds: V19 Bidart, Frank Curse: V26 Bidwell Ghost (Erdrich): V14 Biele, Joelle Rapture: V21 Birch Canoe (Revard): V5 Birches (Frost): V13 Birney, Earle Vancouver Lights: V8 A Birthday (Rossetti): V10 Bishop, Elizabeth Brazil, January 1, 1502: V6 Filling Station: V12 The Fish: V31 The Man-Moth: V27 The Black Heralds (Vallejo): V26
324
I n d e x
A Black Man Talks of Reaping (Bontemps): V32 The Black Snake (Oliver): V31 Black Zodiac (Wright): V10 Blackberrying (Plath): V15 Blake, William The Lamb: V12 A Poison Tree: V24 The Tyger: V2 A Blessing (Wright): V7 ‘‘Blighters’’ (Sassoon): V28 Blood Oranges (Mueller): V13 The Blue Rim of Memory (Levertov): V17 Blumenthal, Michael Inventors: V7 Bly, Robert Come with Me: V6 Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter: V17 Bogan, Louise Words for Departure: V21 Boland, Eavan Anorexic: V12 It’s a Woman’s World: V22 Outside History: V31 Bonnard’s Garden (Barot): V25 Bontemps, Arna A Black Man Talks of Reaping: V32 Borges and I (Borges): V27 Borges, Jorge Luis Borges and I: V27 The Boy (Hacker): V19 Bradstreet, Anne To My Dear and Loving Husband: V6 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: V33 Brazil, January 1, 1502 (Bishop): V6 Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art (Keats): V9 Brock-Broido, Lucie After Raphael: V26 The Bronze Horseman (Pushkin): V28 Bronte¨, Emily Old Stoic: V33 Brooke, Rupert The Soldier: V7 Brooks, Gwendolyn The Bean Eaters: V2 The Explorer: V32 The Sonnet-Ballad: V1 Strong Men, Riding Horses: V4 We Real Cool: V6 Brouwer, Joel Last Request: V14 Brown, Fleda The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives: V28 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Aurora Leigh: V23 Sonnet 43: V2 Sonnet XXIX: V16
P o e t r y
Browning, Robert My Last Duchess: V1 Porphyria’s Lover: V15 Bryant, William Cullen Thanatopsis: V30 Bukowski, Charles The Tragedy of the Leaves: V28 Burns, Robert A Red, Red Rose: V8 Business (Cruz): V16 The Bustle in a House (Dickinson): V10 But Perhaps God Needs the Longing (Sachs): V20 Butcher Shop (Simic): V7 Byrne, Elena Karina In Particular: V20 Byron, Lord The Destruction of Sennacherib: V1 She Walks in Beauty: V14 When We Two Parted: V29
C The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer): V14 Cargoes (Masefield): V5 Carroll, Lewis Jabberwocky: V11 The Walrus and the Carpenter: V30 Carruth, Hayden I, I, I: V26 Carson, Anne New Rule: V18 Carson, Ciaran The War Correspondent: V26 Carver, Raymond The Cobweb: V17 Casey at the Bat (Thayer): V5 Castillo, Ana While I Was Gone a War Began: V21 Cavafy, C. P. Ithaka: V19 Cavalry Crossing a Ford (Whitman): V13 Celan, Paul Late and Deep: V21 The Centaur (Swenson): V30 Cervantes, Lorna Dee Freeway 280: V30 The Chambered Nautilus (Holmes): V24 The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tennyson): V1 Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales: V14 Chicago (Sandburg): V3 Childhood (Rilke): V19 Chin, Marilyn How I Got That Name: V28 Chocolates (Simpson): V11 Chorale (Young): V25 Christ Climbed Down (Ferlinghetti): V28
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
D Daddy (Plath): V28 The Darkling Thrush (Hardy): V18 Darwin in 1881 (Schnackenberg): V13 Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta (Vazirani): V25 Dawe, Bruce Drifters: V10 Daylights (Warren): V13 Dear Reader (Tate): V10 The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (Jarrell): V2 The Death of the Hired Man (Frost): V4 Death Sentences (Lazic´): V22 Deep Woods (Nemerov): V14 Dennis, Carl The God Who Loves You: V20 The Destruction of Sennacherib (Byron): V1 Dickey, James The Heaven of Animals: V6 The Hospital Window: V11 Dickinson, Emily Because I Could Not Stop for Death: V2 The Bustle in a House: V10 ‘‘Hope’’ Is the Thing with Feathers: V3 I Died for Beauty: V28 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain: V13 I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—: V5 Much Madness Is Divinest Sense: V16 My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close: V8 A Narrow Fellow in the Grass: V11 The Soul Selects Her Own Society: V1 Success Is Counted Sweetest: V32 There’s a Certain Slant of Light: V6 This Is My Letter to the World: V4 Digging (Heaney): V5 Diving into the Wreck (Rich): V29 Dobyns, Stephen It’s like This: V23 Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (Thomas): V1 Donne, John Holy Sonnet 10: V2 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: V11 Doty, Mark The Wings: V28 Dove, Rita Geometry: V15 This Life: V1 Dover Beach (Arnold): V2 Dream Song 29 (Berryman): V27 Dream Variations (Hughes): V15 Drifters (Dawe): V10 A Drink of Water (Heaney): V8 Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon (Po): V20
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter (Bly): V17 Drought Year (Wright): V8 The Drunken Boat (Rimbaud): V28 Dubie, Norman The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter. A Barn in the Urals: V12 Du Bois, W. E. B. The Song of the Smoke: V13 Duffy, Carol Ann Originally: V25 Dugan, Alan How We Heard the Name: V10 Dulce et Decorum Est (Owen): V10 Dunbar, Paul Laurence Sympathy: V33 Duncan, Robert An African Elegy: V13 Dunn, Stephen The Reverse Side: V21 Duration (Paz): V18
Cumulative Author/Title Index
The Cinnamon Peeler (Ondaatje): V19 Cisneros, Sandra Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity: V19 The City Limits (Ammons): V19 Clampitt, Amy Iola, Kansas: V27 Classic Ballroom Dances (Simic): V33 Clifton, Lucille Climbing: V14 homage to my hips: V29 Miss Rosie: V1 Climbing (Clifton): V14 The Cobweb (Carver): V17 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Kubla Khan: V5 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: V4 Colibrı´ (Espada): V16 Collins, Billy The Afterlife: V18 Come with Me (Bly): V6 The Constellation Orion (Kooser): V8 Concord Hymn (Emerson): V4 The Conquerors (McGinley): V13 The Continuous Life (Strand): V18 Conversation with a Stone (Szymborska): V27 Cool Tombs (Sandburg): V6 Cooper, Jane Rent: V25 The Cossacks (Pastan): V25 The Country Without a Post Office (Shahid Ali): V18 Courage (Sexton): V14 The Courage That My Mother Had (Millay): V3 Crane, Stephen War Is Kind: V9 The Creation (Johnson): V1 Creeley, Robert Fading Light: V21 The Cremation of Sam McGee (Service): V10 The Crime Was in Granada (Machado): V23 Cruz, Victor Hernandez Business: V16 Cullen, Countee Any Human to Another: V3 cummings, e. e. anyone lived in a pretty how town: V30 i was sitting in mcsorley’s: V13 l(a: V1 maggie and milly and molly and may: V12 old age sticks: V3 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond: V19 Curse (Bidart): V26 The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter. A Barn in the Urals (Dubie): V12
A u t h o r / T i t l e
E The Eagle (Tennyson): V11 Early in the Morning (Lee): V17 Easter 1916 (Yeats): V5 Eating Poetry (Strand): V9 Ego-Tripping (Giovanni): V28 Elegy for My Father, Who is Not Dead (Hudgins): V14 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Gray): V9 An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum (Spender): V23 Elena (Mora): V33 Eliot, T. S. The Hollow Men: V33 Journey of the Magi: V7 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: V1 The Waste Land: V20 Emerson, Claudia My Grandmother’s Plot in the Family Cemetery: V27 Emerson, Ralph Waldo Concord Hymn: V4 The Rhodora: V17 Erdrich, Louise Bidwell Ghost: V14 Espada, Martı´ n Colibrı´: V16 We Live by What We See at Night: V13 Ethics (Pastan): V8 Everything is Plundered (Akhmatova): V32 The Exhibit (Mueller): V9 The Explorer (Brooks): V32
F Facing It (Komunyakaa): V5 Fading Light (Creeley): V21
3 2 5
C u m u l a t i v e
A u t h o r / T i t l e
Falling Upon Earth (Basho ): V2 A Far Cry from Africa (Walcott): V6 A Farewell to English (Hartnett): V10 Farrokhzaad, Faroogh A Rebirth: V21 Fenton, James The Milkfish Gatherers: V11 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence Christ Climbed Down: V28 Fern Hill (Thomas): V3 Fiddler Crab (Jacobsen): V23 Fifteen (Stafford): V2 Filling Station (Bishop): V12 Finch, Anne A Nocturnal Reverie: V30 Fire and Ice (Frost): V7 The Fish (Bishop): V31 The Fish (Moore): V14 Follower (Heaney): V30 For a New Citizen of These United States (Lee): V15 For An Assyrian Frieze (Viereck): V9 For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin (Nowlan): V12 For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton (Hugo): V17 For the Sake of Strangers (Laux): V24 For the Union Dead (Lowell): V7 For the White poets who would be Indian (Rose): V13 The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower (Thomas): V8 Forche´, Carolyn The Garden Shukkei-en: V18 The Forest (Stewart): V22 Four Mountain Wolves (Silko): V9 Fragment 2 (Sappho): V31 Francis, Robert The Base Stealer: V12 Fraser, Kathleen Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted: V29 Freeway 280 (Cervantes): V30 From the Rising of the Sun (Milosz): V29 Frost, Robert After Apple Picking: V32 Birches: V13 The Death of the Hired Man: V4 Fire and Ice: V7 Mending Wall: V5 Nothing Gold Can Stay: V3 Out, Out—: V10 The Road Not Taken: V2 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: V1 The Wood-Pile: V6 Fu, Tu Jade Flower Palace: V32 Fully Empowered (Neruda): V33 Fulton, Alice Art Thou the Thing I Wanted: V25 Funeral Blues (Auden): V10
326
I n d e x
G Gacela of the Dark Death (Garcı´ a Lorca): V20 Gallagher, Tess I Stop Writing the Poem: V16 Garcı´ a Lorca, Federico Gacela of the Dark Death: V20 Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´as: V31 The Garden Shukkei-en (Forche´): V18 Geometry (Dove): V15 Ghazal (Spires): V21 Ginsberg, Allen Howl: V29 A Supermarket in California: V5 Gioia, Dana The Litany: V24 Giovanni, Nikki Ego-Tripping: V28 Knoxville, Tennessee: V17 Glu¨ck, Louise The Gold Lily: V5 The Mystery: V15 Go Down, Moses (Anonymous): V11 Goblin Market (Rossetti): V27 The God Who Loves You (Dennis): V20 The Gold Lily (Glu¨ck): V5 Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning (Walker): V30 Goodison, Lorna The River Mumma Wants Out: V25 A Grafted Tongue (Montague): V12 Graham, Jorie The Hiding Place: V10 Mind: V17 Gray, Thomas Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: V9 The Greatest Grandeur (Rogers): V18 Gregg, Linda A Thirst Against: V20 Grennan, Eamon Station: V21 Grudnow (Pastan): V32 Gunn, Thom The Missing: V9
H H.D. Helen: V6 Sea Rose: V28 Hacker, Marilyn The Boy: V19 Hahn, Kimiko Pine: V23 Hall, Donald Names of Horses: V8 HaNagid, Shmuel Two Eclipses: V33 Hanging Fire (Lorde): V32 Hardy, Thomas
P o e t r y
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?: V4 The Darkling Thrush: V18 The Man He Killed: V3 Harjo, Joy Anniversary: V15 Remember: V32 Harlem (Hughes): V1 Harlem Hopscotch (Angelou): V2 Hartnett, Michael A Farewell to English: V10 Hashimoto, Sharon What I Would Ask My Husband’s Dead Father: V22 Having a Coke with You (O’Hara): V12 Having it Out with Melancholy (Kenyon): V17 Hawk Roosting (Hughes): V4 Hayden, Robert Runagate Runagate: V31 Those Winter Sundays: V1 Heaney, Seamus Digging: V5 A Drink of Water: V8 Follower: V30 Midnight: V2 The Singer’s House: V17 Heart’s Needle (Snodgrass): V29 The Heaven of Animals (Dickey): V6 He´bert, Anne The Alchemy of Day: V20 Hecht, Anthony ‘‘More Light! More Light!’’: V6 The Heights of Macchu Picchu (Neruda): V28 Hejinian, Lyn Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance: V27 Helen (H.D.): V6 Herbert, George Virtue: V25 Herbert, Zbigniew Why The Classics: V22 Herrick, Robert The Night Piece: To Julia: V29 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time: V13 The Hiding Place (Graham): V10 High Windows (Larkin): V3 The Highwayman (Noyes): V4 Hillman, Brenda Air for Mercury: V20 The Hippopotamus (Nash): V31 Hirsch, Edward Omen: V22 Hirshfield, Jane Three Times My Life Has Opened: V16 His Speed and Strength (Ostriker): V19 Hoagland, Tony Social Life: V19 The Hollow Men (Eliot): V33
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
I I Died for Beauty (Dickinson): V28 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (Dickinson): V13 I Go Back to May 1937 (Olds): V17
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
I Hear America Singing (Whitman): V3 I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died— (Dickinson): V5 I, I, I (Carruth): V26 I Stop Writing the Poem (Gallagher): V16 I, Too (Hughes): V30 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Wordsworth): V33 i was sitting in mcsorley’s (cummings): V13 The Idea of Order at Key West (Stevens): V13 If (Kipling): V22 In a Station of the Metro (Pound): V2 In Flanders Fields (McCrae): V5 In Memory of Radio (Baraka): V9 In Particular (Byrne): V20 In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers (Okita): V32 In the Land of Shinar (Levertov): V7 In the Suburbs (Simpson): V14 Incident in a Rose Garden (Justice): V14 Inventors (Blumentha): V7 Iola, Kansas (Clampitt): V27 An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (Yeats): V1 Island of the Three Marias (Rı´ os): V11 Ithaka (Cavafy): V19 It’s a Woman’s World (Boland): V22 It’s like This (Dobyns): V23
J Jabberwocky (Carroll): V11 Jacobsen, Josephine Fiddler Crab: V23 Jade Flower Palace (Fu): V32 Jarrell, Randall The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner: V2 Losses: V31 Jazz Fantasia (Sandburg): V33 Jeffers, Robinson Hurt Hawks: V3 Shine Perishing Republic: V4 Johnson, James Weldon The Creation: V1 Jonson, Ben On My First Son: V33 Song: To Celia: V23 Journey of the Magi (Eliot): V7 Justice, Donald Incident in a Rose Garden: V14
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
K Keats, John La Belle Dame sans Merci : V17 Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art: V9 Ode on a Grecian Urn : V1 Ode to a Nightingale: V3 On the Grasshopper and the Cricket: V32 When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be: V2 Kelly, Brigit Pegeen The Satyr’s Heart: V22 Kenyon, Jane Having it Out with Melancholy: V17 ‘‘Trouble with Math in a OneRoom Country School’’: V9 Kilroy: (Viereck): V14 Kim, Sue (Suji) Kwock Monologue for an Onion: V24 Kindness (Nye): V24 King James Bible Psalm 8: V9 Psalm 23: V4 Kinnell, Galway Another Night in the Ruins: V26 Saint Francis and the Sow: V9 Kipling, Rudyard If: V22 Kizer, Carolyn To an Unknown Poet: V18 Knowledge (Addonizio): V25 Knoxville, Tennessee (Giovanni): V17 Koch, Kenneth Paradiso: V20 Komunyakaa, Yusef Facing It: V5 Ode to a Drum: V20 Slam, Dunk, & Hook: V30 Kooser, Ted At the Cancer Clinic: V24 The Constellation Orion: V8 Kubla Khan (Coleridge): V5 Kumin, Maxine Address to the Angels: V18 Kunitz, Stanley The War Against the Trees: V11 Kyger, Joanne September: V23
L l(a (cummings): V1 The Lady of Shalott (Tennyson): V15 Lake (Warren): V23 The Lake Isle of Innisfree (Yeats): V15 The Lamb (Blake): V12 Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´as (Lorca): V31 Lament for the Dorsets (Purdy): V5 Landscape with Tractor (Taylor): V10
3 2 7
Cumulative Author/Title Index
Holmes, Oliver Wendell The Chambered Nautilus: V24 Old Ironsides: V9 Holy Sonnet 10 (Donne): V2 homage to my hips (Clifton): V29 Hongo, Garrett The Legend: V25 What For: V33 Hope, A. D. Beware of Ruins: V8 Hope Is a Tattered Flag (Sandburg): V12 ‘‘Hope’’ Is the Thing with Feathers (Dickinson): V3 Hopkins, Gerard Manley Pied Beauty: V26 The Horizons of Rooms (Merwin): V15 The Horses (Hughes): V32 The Hospital Window (Dickey): V11 Housman, A. E. To an Athlete Dying Young: V7 When I Was One-and-Twenty: V4 How I Got That Name (Chin): V28 How We Heard the Name (Dugan): V10 Howe, Marie What Belongs to Us: V15 Howl (Ginsberg): V29 Hudgins, Andrew Elegy for My Father, Who is Not Dead: V14 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Pound): V16 Hughes, Langston Dream Variations: V15 I, Too: V30 Harlem: V1 Mother to Son: V3 The Negro Speaks of Rivers: V10 Theme for English B: V6 Hughes, Ted Hawk Roosting: V4 The Horses: V32 Perfect Light: V19 Hugo, Richard For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton: V17 Hum (Lauterbach): V25 Hunger in New York City (Ortiz): V4 Huong, Ho Xuan Spring-Watching Pavilion: V18 Hurt Hawks (Jeffers): V3 Huswifery (Taylor): V31 Hymn to Aphrodite (Sappho): V20 Hymn to Beauty (Baudelaire): V21
A u t h o r / T i t l e
C u m u l a t i v e
A u t h o r / T i t l e
Lanier, Sidney Song of the Chattahoochee: V14 Larkin, Philip An Arundel Tomb: V12 High Windows: V3 Toads: V4 The Last Question (Parker): V18 Last Request (Brouwer): V14 Late and Deep (Celan): V21 Lauterbach, Ann Hum: V25 Laux, Dorianne For the Sake of Strangers: V24 Lawrence, D. H. Piano: V6 Layton, Irving A Tall Man Executes a Jig: V12 Lazic´, Radmila Death Sentences: V22 Leda and the Swan (Yeats): V13 Lee, Li-Young Early in the Morning: V17 For a New Citizen of These United States: V15 The Weight of Sweetness: V11 The Legend (Hongo): V25 Lepidopterology (Svenbro): V23 Levertov, Denise The Blue Rim of Memory: V17 In the Land of Shinar: V7 A Tree Telling of Orpheus: V31 Leviathan (Merwin): V5 Levine, Philip Starlight: V8 Lim, Shirley Geok-lin Pantoun for Chinese Women: V29 Lineage (Walker): V31 The Litany (Gioia): V24 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth The Arsenal at Springfield: V17 Paul Revere’s Ride: V2 A Psalm of Life: V7 The Wreck of the Hesperus: V31 Lord Randal (Anonymous): V6 Lorde, Audre Hanging Fire: V32 What My Child Learns of the Sea: V16 Losses (Jarrell): V31 Lost in Translation (Merrill): V23 Lost Sister (Song): V5 The Lotus Flowers (Voigt): V33 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (Wilbur): V29 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Eliot): V1 Lovelace, Richard To Lucasta, Going to the Wars: V32 Lowell, Amy The Taxi: V30 Lowell, Robert For the Union Dead: V7
328
I n d e x
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket: V6 Loy, Mina Moreover, the Moon: V20
M MacBeth, George Bedtime Story: V8 Machado, Antonio The Crime Was in Granada: V23 MacLeish, Archibald Ars Poetica: V5 Madgett, Naomi Long Alabama Centennial: V10 maggie and milly and molly and may (cummings): V12 Malroux, Claire Morning Walk: V21 The Man He Killed (Hardy): V3 The Man-Moth (Bishop): V27 Marlowe, Christopher The Passionate Shepherd to His Love: V22 A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (Raine): V7 Marvell, Andrew To His Coy Mistress: V5 Masefield, John Cargoes: V5 Mastectomy (Ostriker): V26 Maternity (Swir): V21 Matsuo Basho Falling Upon Earth: V2 The Moon Glows the Same: V7 Temple Bells Die Out: V18 Maxwell, Glyn The Nerve: V23 McCrae, John In Flanders Fields: V5 McElroy, Colleen A Pie`d: V3 McGinley, Phyllis The Conquerors: V13 Reactionary Essay on Applied Science: V9 McHugh, Heather Three To’s and an Oi: V24 McKay, Claude The Tropics in New York: V4 Meeting the British (Muldoon): V7 Memoir (Van Duyn): V20 Memory (Arvio): V21 Mending Wall (Frost): V5 Merlin Enthralled (Wilbur): V16 Merriam, Eve Onomatopoeia: V6 Merrill, James Lost in Translation: V23 Merwin, W. S. The Horizons of Rooms: V15 Leviathan: V5
P o e t r y
Metamorphoses (Ovid): V22 Midnight (Heaney): V2 Midnight Verses (Akhmatova): V18 The Milkfish Gatherers (Fenton): V11 Millay, Edna St. Vincent An Ancient Gesture: V31 The Courage That My Mother Had: V3 Wild Swans: V17 Milosz, Czeslaw From the Rising of the Sun: V29 Song of a Citizen: V16 Milton, John [On His Blindness] Sonnet 16: V3 On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three: V17 Mind (Graham): V17 Mirabai All I Was Doing Was Breathing: V24 Mirror (Plath): V1 Miss Rosie (Clifton): V1 The Missing (Gunn): V9 Momaday, N. Scott Angle of Geese: V2 To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly: V11 Monologue for an Onion (Kim): V24 Montague, John A Grafted Tongue: V12 Montale, Eugenio On the Threshold: V22 The Moon Glows the Same (Basho ): V7 Moore, Marianne The Fish: V14 Poetry: V17 Mora, Pat Elena: V33 ‘‘More Light! More Light!’’ (Hecht): V6 Moreover, the Moon (Loy): V20 Morning Walk (Malroux): V21 Mother to Son (Hughes): V3 Much Madness Is Divinest Sense (Dickinson): V16 Muldoon, Paul Meeting the British: V7 Pineapples and Pomegranates: V22 Mueller, Lisel Blood Oranges: V13 The Exhibit: V9 Muse´e des Beaux Arts (Auden): V1 Mushrooms (Plath): V33 Music Lessons (Oliver): V8 Muske-Dukes, Carol Our Side: V24 My Father’s Song (Ortiz): V16 My Grandmother’s Plot in the Family Cemetery (Emerson): V27 My Last Duchess (Browning): V1 My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close (Dickinson): V8
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
My Mother Pieced Quilts (Acosta): V12 My Papa’s Waltz (Roethke): V3 The Mystery (Glu¨ck): V15
Names of Horses (Hall): V8 A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (Dickinson): V11 Nash, Ogden The Hippopotamus: V31 Native Guard (Trethewey): V29 The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Hughes): V10 Nemerov, Howard Deep Woods: V14 The Phoenix: V10 Neruda, Pablo Fully Empowered: V33 The Heights of Macchu Picchu: V28 Tonight I Can Write: V11 The Nerve (Maxwell): V23 New Rule (Carson): V18 The Night Piece: To Julia (Herrick): V29 A Nocturnal Reverie (Finch): V30 A Noiseless Patient Spider (Whitman): V31 Not like a Cypress (Amichai): V24 Not Waving but Drowning (Smith): V3 Nothing Gold Can Stay (Frost): V3 Nowlan, Alden For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin: V12 Noyes, Alfred The Highwayman: V4 Nye, Naomi Shihab Kindness: V24 Shoulders: V33 The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd (Raleigh): V14
O O Captain! My Captain! (Whitman): V2 Ode on a Grecian Urn (Keats): V1 Ode to a Drum (Komunyakaa): V20 Ode to a Nightingale (Keats): V3 Ode to the West Wind (Shelley): V2 O’Hara, Frank Having a Coke with You: V12 Why I Am Not a Painter: V8 Okita, Dwight In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers: V32 old age sticks (cummings): V3 Old Ironsides (Holmes): V9 Olds, Sharon I Go Back to May 1937: V17 Old Stoic (Bronte¨): V33
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
P Pantoun for Chinese Women (Lim): V29 Paradiso (Koch): V20 Paradoxes and Oxymorons (Ashbery): V11 Parker, Dorothy The Last Question: V18 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (Marlowe): V22 Pastan, Linda The Cossacks: V25 Ethics: V8 Grudnow: V32
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
Paul Revere’s Ride (Longfellow): V2 Pavese, Cesare Two Poems for T.: V20 Paz, Octavio Duration: V18 Sunstone: V30 The Peace of Wild Things (Berry): V30 Perfect Light (Hughes): V19 Phillips, Carl All It Takes: V23 The Phoenix (Nemerov): V10 Piano (Lawrence): V6 Pied Beauty (Hopkins): V26 Piercy, Marge Apple sauce for Eve: V22 Barbie Doll: V9 To Be of Use: V32 Pine (Hahn): V23 Pineapples and Pomegranates (Muldoon): V22 Pinsky, Robert Song of Reasons: V18 Plath, Sylvia Blackberrying: V15 Daddy: V28 Mirror: V1 Mushrooms: V33 A Psalm of Life (Longfellow): V7 Po, Li Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon: V20 Poe, Edgar Allan Annabel Lee: V9 The Bells: V3 The Raven: V1 Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted (Fraser): V29 Poetry (Moore): V17 A Poison Tree (Blake): V24 Ponsot, Marie One Is One: V24 Pope, Alexander The Rape of the Lock: V12 Porphyria’s Lover (Browning): V15 Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End (Santos): V24 Pound, Ezra Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: V16 In a Station of the Metro: V2 The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter: V8 Practice (Voigt): V23 Proem (Tennyson): V19 Psalm 8 (King James Bible): V9 Psalm 23 (King James Bible): V4 Purdy, Al Lament for the Dorsets: V5 Wilderness Gothic: V12 Pushkin, Alexander The Bronze Horseman: V28
Cumulative Author/Title Index
N
Oliver, Mary The Black Snake: V31 Music Lessons: V8 Wild Geese: V15 Omen (Hirsch): V22 On Being Brought from Africa to America (Wheatley): V29 On Freedom’s Ground (Wilbur): V12 [On His Blindness] Sonnet 16 (Milton): V3 On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three (Milton): V17 On Location in the Loire Valley (Ackerman): V19 On My First Son (Jonson): V33 On the Grasshopper and the Cricket (Keats): V32 On the Pulse of Morning (Angelou): V3 On the Threshold (Montale): V22 Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity (Cisneros): V19 Ondaatje, Michael The Cinnamon Peeler: V19 To a Sad Daughter: V8 One Is One (Ponsot): V24 One of the Smallest (Stern): V26 Onomatopoeia (Merriam): V6 Oranges (Soto): V30 Ordinary Words (Stone): V19 Originally (Duffy): V25 Ortiz, Simon Hunger in New York City: V4 My Father’s Song: V16 Ostriker, Alicia His Speed and Strength: V19 Mastectomy: V26 Our Side (Muske-Dukes): V24 Out, Out— (Frost): V10 Outside History (Boland): V31 Overture to a Dance of Locomotives (Williams): V11 Ovid, (Naso, Publius Ovidius) Metamorphoses: V22 Owen, Wilfred Dulce et Decorum Est: V10 Oysters (Sexton): V4 Ozymandias (Shelley): V27
A u t h o r / T i t l e
3 2 9
C u m u l a t i v e
A u t h o r / T i t l e
Q The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket (Lowell): V6 Queen-Ann’s-Lace (Williams): V6
R Raine, Craig A Martian Sends a Postcard Home: V7 Raleigh, Walter, Sir The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd: V14 Ramanujan, A. K. Waterfalls in a Bank: V27 Randall, Dudley Ballad of Birmingham: V5 The Rape of the Lock (Pope): V12 Rapture (Biele): V21 The Raven (Poe): V1 Reactionary Essay on Applied Science (McGinley): V9 A Rebirth (Farrokhzaad): V21 A Red, Red Rose (Burns): V8 The Red Wheelbarrow (Williams): V1 Reed, Ishmael Beware: Do Not Read This Poem: V6 Remember (Harjo): V32 Remember (Rossetti): V14 Rent (Cooper): V25 Requiem (Akhmatova): V27 Reunions with a Ghost (Ai): V16 Revard, Carter Birch Canoe: V5 The Reverse Side (Dunn): V21 The Rhodora (Emerson): V17 Rich, Adrienne Diving into the Wreck: V29 Rusted Legacy: V15 Richard Cory (Robinson): V4 Rilke, Rainer Maria Archaic Torso of Apollo: V27 Childhood: V19 Rimbaud, Arthur The Drunken Boat: V28 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge): V4 Rı´ os, Alberto Island of the Three Marias: V11 The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (Pound): V8 The River Mumma Wants Out (Goodison): V25 The Road Not Taken (Frost): V2 Robinson, E. A. Richard Cory: V4 Roethke, Theodore My Papa’s Waltz: V3 Rogers, Pattiann The Greatest Grandeur: V18 The Room (Aiken): V24
330
I n d e x
Rose, Wendy For the White poets who would be Indian: V13 Rossetti, Christina A Birthday: V10 Goblin Market: V27 Remember: V14 Ruefle, Mary Sentimental Education: V26 Rukeyser, Muriel Ballad of Orange and Grape: V10 St. Roach: V29 Runagate Runagate (Hayden): V31 Russian Letter (Yau): V26 Rusted Legacy (Rich): V15
S Sachs, Nelly But Perhaps God Needs the Longing: V20 Sailing to Byzantium (Yeats): V2 Saint Francis and the Sow (Kinnell): V9 Saje´, Natasha The Art of the Novel: V23 Salter, Mary Jo Trompe l’Oeil: V22 Sanchez, Sonia An Anthem: V26 Sandburg, Carl Chicago: V3 Cool Tombs: V6 Hope Is a Tattered Flag: V12 Jazz Fantasia: V33 Santos, Sherod Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End: V24 Sappho Fragment 2: V31 Hymn to Aphrodite: V20 Sassoon, Siegfried ‘‘Blighters’’: V28 A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General (Swift): V27 The Satyr’s Heart (Kelly): V22 Schnackenberg, Gjertrud Darwin in 1881: V13 Supernatural Love: V25 Sea Rose (H.D.): V28 The Seafarer (Anonymous): V8 The Second Coming (Yeats): V7 Seeing You (Valentine): V24 Self-Portrait (Zagajewski): V25 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Ashbery): V28 Sentimental Education (Ruefle): V26 September (Kyger): V23 September 1, 1939 (Auden): V27 Service, Robert W. The Cremation of Sam McGee: V10 Seven Seeds (Bialosky): V19
P o e t r y
Sexton, Anne Courage: V14 Oysters: V4 Young: V30 Shahid Ali, Agha The Country Without a Post Office: V18 Shakespeare, William Sonnet 18: V2 Sonnet 19: V9 Sonnet 29: V8 Sonnet 30: V4 Sonnet 55: V5 Sonnet 116: V3 Sonnet 130: V1 Shapiro, Karl Auto Wreck: V3 She Walks in Beauty (Byron): V14 Shelley, Percy Bysshe Ode to the West Wind: V2 Ozymandias: V27 To a Sky-Lark: V32 Shine, Perishing Republic (Jeffers): V4 Shoulders (Nye): V33 Sidney, Philip Ye Goatherd Gods: V30 Silko, Leslie Marmon Four Mountain Wolves: V9 Story from Bear Country: V16 Simic, Charles Butcher Shop: V7 Classic Ballroom Dances: V33 Simpson, Louis American Poetry: V7 Chocolates: V11 In the Suburbs: V14 The Singer’s House (Heaney): V17 Sir Patrick Spens (Anonymous): V4 Siren Song (Atwood): V7 60 (Tagore): V18 Slam, Dunk, & Hook (Komunyakaa): V30 Small Town with One Road (Soto): V7 Smart and Final Iris (Tate): V15 Smith, Stevie Not Waving but Drowning: V3 Snodgrass, W. D. Heart’s Needle: V29 Snyder, Gary Anasazi: V9 True Night: V19 Social Life (Hoagland): V19 The Soldier (Brooke): V7 Some People Like Poetry (Szymborska): V31 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond (cummings): V19 Song, Cathy Lost Sister: V5 Song of a Citizen (Milosz): V16 Song of Reasons (Pinsky): V18
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
Sunstone (Paz): V30 A Supermarket in California (Ginsberg): V5 Supernatural Love (Schnackenberg): V25 Svenbro, Jesper Lepidopterology: V23 Swenson, May The Centaur: V30 Southbound on the Freeway: V16 Swift, Jonathan A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General: V27 Swing Low Sweet Chariot (Anonymous): V1 Swir, Anna Maternity: V21 Sympathy (Dunbar): V33 Szymborska, Wisława Astonishment: V15 Conversation with a Stone: V27 Some People Like Poetry: V31
T Tagore, Rabindranath 60: V18 A Tall Man Executes a Jig (Layton): V12 Tate, James Dear Reader: V10 Smart and Final Iris: V15 The Taxi (Lowell): V30 Taylor, Edward Huswifery: V31 Taylor, Henry Landscape with Tractor: V10 Tears, Idle Tears (Tennyson): V4 Teasdale, Sara There Will Come Soft Rains: V14 Telephone Conversation (Soyinka): V27 Temple Bells Die Out (Basho ): V18 Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning (Behn): V21 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord The Charge of the Light Brigade: V1 The Eagle: V11 The Lady of Shalott: V15 Proem: V19 Tears, Idle Tears: V4 Ulysses: V2 Thanatopsis (Bryant): V30 Thayer, Ernest Lawrence Casey at the Bat: V5 Theme for English B (Hughes): V6 There’s a Certain Slant of Light (Dickinson): V6 There Will Come Soft Rains (Teasdale): V14 A Thirst Against (Gregg): V20 This Life (Dove): V1
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
Thomas, Dylan Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night: V1 Fern Hill: V3 The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower: V8 Those Winter Sundays (Hayden): V1 Three Times My Life Has Opened (Hirshfield): V16 Three To’s and an Oi (McHugh): V24 Tintern Abbey (Wordsworth): V2 To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly (Momaday): V11 To a Sad Daughter (Ondaatje): V8 To a Sky-Lark (Shelley): V32 To an Athlete Dying Young (Housman): V7 To an Unknown Poet (Kizer): V18 To Be of Use (Piercy): V32 To His Coy Mistress (Marvell): V5 To His Excellency General Washington (Wheatley): V13 To Lucasta, Going to the Wars (Lovelace): V32 To My Dear and Loving Husband (Bradstreet): V6 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (Herrick): V13 Toads (Larkin): V4 Tonight I Can Write (Neruda): V11 The Toni Morrison Dreams (Alexander): V22 Toomer, Jean Storm Ending: V31 The Tragedy of the Leaves (Bukowski): V28 Transtro¨mer, Tomas Answers to Letters: V21 A Tree Telling of Orpheus (Levertov): V31 Trethewey, Natasha Native Guard: V29 Trompe l’Oeil (Salter): V22 The Tropics in New York (McKay): V4 True Night (Snyder): V19 Tsvetaeva, Marina An Attempt at Jealousy: V29 Two Eclipses (HaNagid): V33 Two Poems for T. (Pavese): V20 The Tyger (Blake): V2
Cumulative Author/Title Index
Song of the Chattahoochee (Lanier): V14 The Song of the Smoke (Du Bois): V13 Song: To Celia (Jonson): V23 Sonnet 16 [On His Blindness] (Milton): V3 Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare): V2 Sonnet 19 (Shakespeare): V9 Sonnet 29 (Shakespeare): V8 Sonnet 30 (Shakespeare): V4 Sonnet XXIX (Browning): V16 Sonnet 43 (Browning): V2 Sonnet 55 (Shakespeare): V5 Sonnet 75 (Spenser): V32 Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare): V3 Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare): V1 The Sonnet-Ballad (Brooks): V1 Soto, Gary Oranges: V30 Small Town with One Road: V7 The Soul Selects Her Own Society (Dickinson): V1 Southbound on the Freeway (Swenson): V16 Soyinka, Wole Telephone Conversation: V27 Spender, Stephen An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum: V23 Spenser, Edmund Sonnet 75: V32 Spires, Elizabeth Ghazal: V21 Spring-Watching Pavilion (Huong): V18 St. Roach (Rukeyser): V29 Stafford, William At the Bomb Testing Site: V8 Fifteen: V2 Ways to Live: V16 Starlight (Levine): V8 Station (Grennan): V21 Stern, Gerald One of the Smallest: V26 Stevens, Wallace The Idea of Order at Key West: V13 Sunday Morning: V16 Stewart, Susan The Forest: V22 Stone, Ruth Ordinary Words: V19 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost): V1 Storm Ending (Toomer): V31 Story from Bear Country (Silko): V16 Strand, Mark The Continuous Life: V18 Eating Poetry: V9 Strong Men, Riding Horses (Brooks): V4 Success Is Counted Sweetest (Dickinson): V32 Sunday Morning (Stevens): V16
A u t h o r / T i t l e
U Ulysses (Tennyson): V2 Ungaretti, Giuseppe Variations on Nothing: V20 The Unknown Citizen (Auden): V3 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666 (Bradstreet): V33
3 3 1
C u m u l a t i v e
A u t h o r / T i t l e
V A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (Donne): V11 Valentine, Jean Seeing You: V24 Vallejo, Ce´sar The Black Heralds: V26 Van Duyn, Mona Memoir: V20 Vancouver Lights (Birney): V8 Variations on Nothing (Ungaretti): V20 Vazirani, Reetika Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta: V25 Viereck, Peter For An Assyrian Frieze: V9 Kilroy: V14 View (Bell): V25 Virtue (Herbert): V25 Voigt, Ellen Bryant The Lotus Flowers: V33 Practice: V23
W Walcott, Derek A Far Cry from Africa: V6 Waldner, Liz Witness: V26 Walker, Alice Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning: V30 Walker, Margaret Lineage: V31 Walk Your Body Down (Barbarese): V26 The Walrus and the Carpenter (Carroll): V30 The War Against the Trees (Kunitz): V11 The War Correspondent (Carson): V26 War Is Kind (Crane): V9 Warren, Rosanna Daylights: V13 Lake: V23 The Waste Land (Eliot): V20 Waterfalls in a Bank (Ramanujan): V27 Ways to Live (Stafford): V16 We Live by What We See at Night (Espada): V13
332
I n d e x
We Real Cool (Brooks): V6 The Weight of Sweetness (Lee): V11 What Belongs to Us (Howe): V15 What For (Hongo): V33 What I Would Ask My Husband’s Dead Father (Hashimoto): V22 What My Child Learns of the Sea (Lorde): V16 What the Poets Could Have Been (Baggott): V26 Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought from Africa to America: V29 To His Excellency General Washington: V13 When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be (Keats): V2 When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (Whitman): V22 When I Was One-and-Twenty (Housman): V4 When We Two Parted (Byron): V29 While I Was Gone a War Began (Castillo): V21 Whitman, Walt Cavalry Crossing a Ford: V13 I Hear America Singing: V3 A Noiseless Patient Spider: V31 O Captain! My Captain!: V2 When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer: V22 Whoso List to Hunt (Wyatt): V25 Why I Am Not a Painter (O’Hara): V8 Why The Classics (Herbert): V22 Wilbur, Richard Beowulf: V11 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World: V29 Merlin Enthralled: V16 On Freedom’s Ground: V12 Wild Geese (Oliver): V15 Wild Swans (Millay): V17 Wilderness Gothic (Purdy): V12 Williams, William Carlos Overture to a Dance of Locomotives: V11 Queen-Ann’s-Lace: V6 The Red Wheelbarrow: V1 The Wings (Doty): V28
P o e t r y
Witness (Waldner): V26 Woman Work (Angelou): V33 The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives (Brown): V28 The Wood-Pile (Frost): V6 Words for Departure (Bogan): V21 Wordsworth, William I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: V33 Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey: V2 The Wreck of the Hesperus (Longfellow): V31 Wright, Charles Black Zodiac: V10 Wright, James A Blessing: V7 Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio: V8 Wright, Judith Drought Year: V8 Wyatt, Thomas Whoso List to Hunt: V25
Y Yau, John Russian Letter: V26 Yeats, William Butler Easter 1916: V5 An Irish Airman Foresees His Death: V1 The Lake Isle of Innisfree: V15 Leda and the Swan: V13 Sailing to Byzantium: V2 The Second Coming: V7 Ye Goatherd Gods (Sidney): V30 Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance (Hejinian): V27 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Babii Yar: V29 Young (Sexton): V30 Young, Kevin Chorale: V25 Youssef, Saadi America, America: V29
Z Zagajewski, Adam Self-Portrait: V25
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index Acoma Pueblo Ortiz, Simon Hunger in New York City: V4 My Father’s Song: V16
African American Ai Reunions with a Ghost: V16 Angelou, Maya Harlem Hopscotch: V2 On the Pulse of Morning: V3 Woman Work: V33 Baraka, Amiri In Memory of Radio: V9 Bontemps, Arna A Black Man Talks of Reaping: V32 Brooks, Gwendolyn The Bean Eaters: V2 The Explorer: V32 The Sonnet-Ballad: V1 Strong Men, Riding Horses: V4 We Real Cool: V6 Clifton, Lucille Climbing: V14 homage to my hips: V29 Miss Rosie: V1 Cullen, Countee Any Human to Another: V3 Dove, Rita Geometry: V15 This Life: V1 Dunbar, Paul Laurence Sympathy: V33 Giovanni, Nikki Ego-Tripping: V28 Knoxville, Tennessee: V17
Hayden, Robert Runagate Runagate: V31 Those Winter Sundays: V1 Hughes, Langston Dream Variations: V15 Harlem: V1 I, Too: V30 Mother to Son: V3 The Negro Speaks of Rivers: V10 Theme for English B: V6 Johnson, James Weldon The Creation: V1 Komunyakaa, Yusef Facing It: V5 Ode to a Drum: V20 Slam, Dunk, & Hook: V30 Lorde, Audre Hanging Fire: V32 What My Child Learns of the Sea: V16 Madgett, Naomi Long Alabama Centennial: V10 McElroy, Colleen A Pie`d: V3 Phillips, Carl All It Takes: V23 Randall, Dudley Ballad of Birmingham: V5 Reed, Ishmael Beware: Do Not Read This Poem: V6 Sanchez, Sonia An Anthem: V26 Toomer, Jean Storm Ending: V31 Trethewey, Natasha Native Guard: V29
Walker, Alice Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning: V30 Walker, Margaret Lineage: V31 Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought from Africa to America: V29 To His Excellency General Washington: V13
American Ackerman, Diane On Location in the Loire Valley: V19 Acosta, Teresa Palomo My Mother Pieced Quilts: V12 Addonizio, Kim Knowledge: V25 Ai Reunions with a Ghost: V16 Aiken, Conrad The Room: V24 Alegrı´ a, Claribel Accounting: V21 Alexander, Elizabeth The Toni Morrison Dreams: V22 Ammons, A. R. The City Limits: V19 Angelou, Maya Harlem Hopscotch: V2 On the Pulse of Morning: V3 Woman Work: V33 Ashbery, John Paradoxes and Oxymorons: V11 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: V28
3 3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
Arvio, Sarah Memory: V21 Auden, W. H. As I Walked Out One Evening: V4 Funeral Blues: V10 Muse´e des Beaux Arts: V1 September 1, 1939: V27 The Unknown Citizen: V3 Baggott, Julianna What the Poets Could Have Been: V26 Bang, Mary Jo Allegory: V23 Barbarese, J. T. Walk Your Body Down: V26 Barot, Rick Bonnard’s Garden: V25 Bass, Ellen And What If I Spoke of Despair: V19 Behn, Robin Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning: V21 Bell, Marvin View: V25 Berry, Wendell The Peace of Wild Things: V30 Berryman, John Dream Song 29: V27 Bialosky, Jill Seven Seeds: V19 Bidart, Frank Curse: V26 Biele, Joelle Rapture: V21 Bishop, Elizabeth Brazil, January 1, 1502: V6 Filling Station: V12 The Fish: V31 The Man-Moth: V27 Blumenthal, Michael Inventors: V7 Bly, Robert Come with Me: V6 Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter: V17 Bogan, Louise Words for Departure: V21 Bontemps, Arna A Black Man Talks of Reaping: V32 Bradstreet, Anne To My Dear and Loving Husband: V6 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: V33 Brock-Broido, Lucie After Raphael: V26 Brooks, Gwendolyn The Bean Eaters: V2 The Explorer: V32 The Sonnet-Ballad: V1 Strong Men, Riding Horses: V4 We Real Cool: V6
334
I n d e x
Brouwer, Joel Last Request: V14 Bryant, William Cullen Thanatopsis: V30 Bukowski, Charles The Tragedy of the Leaves: V28 Byrne, Elena Karina In Particular: V20 Carruth, Hayden I, I, I: V26 Carver, Raymond The Cobweb: V17 Castillo, Ana While I Was Gone a War Began: V21 Cervantes, Lorna Dee Freeway 280: V30 Chin, Marilyn How I Got That Name: V28 Cisneros, Sandra Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity: V19 Clampitt, Amy Iola, Kansas: V27 Clifton, Lucille Climbing: V14 homage to my hips: V29 Miss Rosie: V1 Collins, Billy The Afterlife: V18 Cooper, Jane Rent: V25 Crane, Stephen War Is Kind: V9 Creeley, Robert Fading Light: V21 Cruz, Victor Hernandez Business: V16 Cullen, Countee Any Human to Another: V3 cummings, e. e. anyone lived in a pretty how town: V30 i was sitting in mcsorley’s: V13 l(a: V1 maggie and milly and molly and may: V12 old age sticks: V3 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond: V19 Dennis, Carl The God Who Loves You: V20 Dickey, James The Heaven of Animals: V6 The Hospital Window: V11 Dickinson, Emily Because I Could Not Stop for Death: V2 The Bustle in a House: V10 ‘‘Hope’’ Is the Thing with Feathers: V3 I Died for Beauty: V28 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain: V13 I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—: V5
P o e t r y
Much Madness Is Divinest Sense: V16 My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close: V8 A Narrow Fellow in the Grass: V11 The Soul Selects Her Own Society: V1 Success Is Counted Sweetest: V32 There’s a Certain Slant of Light: V6 This Is My Letter to the World: V4 Dobyns, Stephen It’s like This: V23 Dove, Rita Geometry: V15 This Life: V1 Dubie, Norman The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter. A Barn in the Urals: V12 Du Bois, W. E. B. The Song of the Smoke: V13 Dugan, Alan How We Heard the Name: V10 Dunbar, Paul Laurence Sympathy: V33 Duncan, Robert An African Elegy: V13 Dunn, Stephen The Reverse Side: V21 Eliot, T. S. The Hollow Men: V33 Journey of the Magi: V7 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: V1 Emerson, Claudia My Grandmother’s Plot in the Family Cemetery: V27 Emerson, Ralph Waldo Concord Hymn: V4 The Rhodora: V17 Erdrich, Louise Bidwell Ghost: V14 Espada, Martı´ n Colibrı´: V16 We Live by What We See at Night: V13 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence Christ Climbed Down: V28 Forche´, Carolyn The Garden Shukkei-En: V18 Francis, Robert The Base Stealer: V12 Fraser, Kathleen Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted: V29 Frost, Robert After Apple Picking: V32 Birches: V13 The Death of the Hired Man: V4 Fire and Ice: V7 Mending Wall: V5 Nothing Gold Can Stay: V3 Out, Out—: V10
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
Hongo, Garrett The Legend: V25 What For: V33 Howe, Marie What Belongs to Us: V15 Hudgins, Andrew Elegy for My Father, Who is Not Dead: V14 Hughes, Langston Dream Variations: V15 Harlem: V1 I, Too: V30 Mother to Son: V3 The Negro Speaks of Rivers: V10 Theme for English B: V6 Hugo, Richard For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton: V17 Jarrell, Randall The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner: V2 Losses: V31 Jeffers, Robinson Hurt Hawks: V3 Shine, Perishing Republic: V4 Johnson, James Weldon The Creation: V1 Justice, Donald Incident in a Rose Garden: V14 Kelly, Brigit Pegeen The Satyr’s Heart: V22 Kenyon, Jane Having it Out with Melancholy: V17 ‘‘Trouble with Math in a OneRoom Country School’’: V9 Kim, Sue (Suji) Kwock Monologue for an Onion: V24 Kinnell, Galway Another Night in the Ruins: V26 Saint Francis and the Sow: V9 Kizer, Carolyn To An Unknown Poet: V18 Koch, Kenneth Paradiso: V20 Komunyakaa, Yusef Facing It: V5 Ode to a Drum: V20 Slam, Dunk, & Hook: V30 Kooser, Ted At the Cancer Clinic: V24 The Constellation Orion: V8 Kumin, Maxine Address to the Angels: V18 Kunitz, Stanley The War Against the Trees: V11 Kyger, Joanne September: V23 Lanier, Sidney Song of the Chattahoochee: V14 Lauterbach, Ann Hum: V25 Laux, Dorianne For the Sake of Strangers: V24
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
Lee, Li-Young Early in the Morning: V17 For a New Citizen of These United States: V15 The Weight of Sweetness: V11 Levertov, Denise The Blue Rim of Memory: V17 In the Land of Shinar: V7 A Tree Telling of Orpheus: V31 Levine, Philip Starlight: V8 Lim, Shirley Geok-lin Pantoun for Chinese Women: V29 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth The Arsenal at Springfield: V17 Paul Revere’s Ride: V2 A Psalm of Life: V7 The Wreck of the Hesperus: V31 Lorde, Audre Hanging Fire: V32 What My Child Learns of the Sea: V16 Lowell, Amy The Taxi: V30 Lowell, Robert For the Union Dead: V7 The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket: V6 Loy, Mina Moreover, the Moon: V20 MacLeish, Archibald Ars Poetica: V5 Madgett, Naomi Long Alabama Centennial: V10 McElroy, Colleen A Pie`d: V3 McGinley, Phyllis The Conquerors: V13 Reactionary Essay on Applied Science: V9 McHugh, Heather Three To’s and an Oi: V24 McKay, Claude The Tropics in New York: V4 Merriam, Eve Onomatopoeia: V6 Merrill, James Lost in Translation: V23 Merwin, W. S. The Horizons of Rooms: V15 Leviathan: V5 Millay, Edna St. Vincent An Ancient Gesture: V31 The Courage that My Mother Had: V3 Wild Swans: V17 Momaday, N. Scott Angle of Geese: V2 To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly: V11 Montague, John A Grafted Tongue: V12
3 3 5
Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index
The Road Not Taken: V2 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: V1 The Wood-Pile: V6 Fulton, Alice Art Thou the Thing I Wanted: V25 Gallagher, Tess I Stop Writing the Poem: V16 Ginsberg, Allen Howl: V29 A Supermarket in California: V5 Gioia, Dana The Litany: V24 Giovanni, Nikki Ego-Tripping: V28 Knoxville, Tennessee: V17 Glu¨ck, Louise The Gold Lily: V5 The Mystery: V15 Graham, Jorie The Hiding Place: V10 Mind: V17 Gregg, Linda A Thirst Against: V20 Gunn, Thom The Missing: V9 H.D. Helen: V6 Sea Rose: V28 Hacker, Marilyn The Boy: V19 Hahn, Kimiko Pine: V23 Hall, Donald Names of Horses: V8 Harjo, Joy Anniversary: V15 Remember: V32 Hashimoto, Sharon What I Would Ask My Husband’s Dead Father: V22 Hayden, Robert Runagate Runagate: V31 Those Winter Sundays: V1 Hecht, Anthony ‘‘More Light! More Light!’’: V6 Hejinian, Lyn Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance: V27 Hillman, Brenda Air for Mercury: V20 Hirsch, Edward Omen: V22 Hirshfield, Jane Three Times My Life Has Opened: V16 Hoagland, Tony Social Life: V19 Holmes, Oliver Wendell The Chambered Nautilus: V24 Old Ironsides: V9
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
C u m u l a t i v e
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
Moore, Marianne The Fish: V14 Poetry: V17 Mora, Pat Elena: V33 Mueller, Lisel The Exhibit: V9 Muske-Dukes, Carol Our Side: V24 Nash, Ogden The Hippopotamus: V31 Nemerov, Howard Deep Woods: V14 The Phoenix: V10 Nye, Naomi Shihab Kindness: V24 Shoulders: V33 O’Hara, Frank Having a Coke with You: V12 Why I Am Not a Painter: V8 Olds, Sharon I Go Back to May 1937: V17 Oliver, Mary The Black Snake: V31 Music Lessons: V8 Wild Geese: V15 Ortiz, Simon Hunger in New York City: V4 My Father’s Song: V16 Ostriker, Alicia His Speed and Strength: V19 Mastectomy: V26 Okita, Dwight In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers: V32 Parker, Dorothy The Last Question: V18 Pastan, Linda The Cossacks: V25 Ethics: V8 Grudnow: V32 Phillips, Carl All It Takes: V23 Piercy, Marge Apple sauce for Eve: V22 Barbie Doll: V9 To Be of Use: V32 Pinsky, Robert Song of Reasons: V18 Plath, Sylvia Blackberrying: V15 Daddy: V28 Mirror: V1 Mushrooms: V33 Poe, Edgar Allan Annabel Lee: V9 The Bells: V3 The Raven: V1 Ponsot, Marie One Is One: V24
336
I n d e x
Pound, Ezra Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: V16 In a Station of the Metro: V2 The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter: V8 Randall, Dudley Ballad of Birmingham: V5 Reed, Ishmael Beware: Do Not Read This Poem: V6 Revard, Carter Birch Canoe: V5 Rich, Adrienne Diving into the Wreck: V29 Rusted Legacy: V15 Rı´ os, Alberto Island of the Three Marias: V11 Robinson, E. A. Richard Cory: V4 Roethke, Theodore My Papa’s Waltz: V3 Rogers, Pattiann The Greatest Grandeur: V18 Rose, Wendy For the White poets who would be Indian: V13 Ruefle, Mary Sentimental Education: V26 Rukeyser, Muriel Ballad of Orange and Grape: V10 St. Roach: V29 Salter, Mary Jo Trompe l’Oeil: V22 Sanchez, Sonia An Anthem: V26 Sandburg, Carl Chicago: V3 Cool Tombs: V6 Jazz Fantasia: V33 Hope Is a Tattered Flag: V12 Santos, Sherod Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End: V24 Schnackenberg, Gjertrud Darwin in 1881: V13 Supernatural Love: V25 Sexton, Anne Courage: V14 Oysters: V4 Young: V30 Shapiro, Karl Auto Wreck: V3 Silko, Leslie Marmon Four Mountain Wolves: V9 Story from Bear Country: V16 Simic, Charles Butcher Shop: V7 Simpson, Louis American Poetry: V7 Chocolates: V11 In the Suburbs: V14 Snodgrass, W. D. Heart’s Needle: V29
P o e t r y
Snyder, Gary Anasazi: V9 True Night: V19 Song, Cathy Lost Sister: V5 Soto, Gary Oranges: V30 Small Town with One Road: V7 Spires, Elizabeth Ghazal: V21 Stafford, William At the Bomb Testing Site: V8 Fifteen: V2 Ways to Live: V16 Stern, Gerald One of the Smallest: V26 Stevens, Wallace The Idea of Order at Key West: V13 Sunday Morning: V16 Stewart, Susan The Forest: V22 Stone, Ruth Ordinary Words: V19 Strand, Mark The Continuous Life: V18 Swenson, May The Centaur: V30 Southbound on the Freeway: V16 Tate, James Dear Reader: V10 Smart and Final Iris: V15 Taylor, Edward Huswifery: V31 Taylor, Henry Landscape with Tractor: V10 Teasdale, Sara There Will Come Soft Rains: V14 Thayer, Ernest Lawrence Casey at the Bat: V5 Toomer, Jean Storm Ending: V31 Trethewey, Natasha Native Guard: V29 Valentine, Jean Seeing You: V24 Van Duyn, Mona Memoir: V20 Vazirani, Reetika Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta: V25 Viereck, Peter For An Assyrian Frieze: V9 Kilroy: V14 Voigt, Ellen Bryant The Lotus Flowers: V33 Practice: V23 Waldner, Liz Witness: V26 Walker, Alice Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning: V30 Walker, Margaret Lineage: V31
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
Argentinian Borges, Jorge Luis Borges and I: V27
Arab American Nye, Naomi Shihab Kindness: V24 Shoulders: V33
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin Pantoun for Chinese Women: V29 Okita, Dwight In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers: V32 Yau, John Russian Letter: V26
Australian Dawe, Bruce Drifters: V10 Hope, A. D. Beware of Ruins: V8 Wright, Judith Drought Year: V8
Canadian Atwood, Margaret Siren Song: V7 Birney, Earle Vancouver Lights: V8 Carson, Anne New Rule: V18 He´bert, Anne The Alchemy of Day: V20 Jacobsen, Josephine Fiddler Crab: V23 Layton, Irving A Tall Man Executes a Jig: V12 McCrae, John In Flanders Fields: V5 Nowlan, Alden For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin: V12 Ondaatje, Michael The Cinnamon Peeler: V19 To a Sad Daughter: V8 Purdy, Al Lament for the Dorsets: V5 Wilderness Gothic: V12 Service, Robert W. The Cremation of Sam McGee: V10 Strand, Mark Eating Poetry: V9
Chilean Asian American Chin, Marilyn How I Got That Name: V28 Hahn, Kimiko Pine: V23 Hashimoto, Sharon What I Would Ask My Husband’s Dead Father: V22 Hongo, Garrett The Legend: V25 What For: V33 Kim, Sue (Suji) Kwok Monologue for an Onion: V24
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
Neruda, Pablo Fully Empowered: V33 The Heights of Macchu Picchu: V28 Tonight I Can Write: V11
Chinese Chin, Marilyn How I Got That Name: V28 Fu, Tu Jade Flower Palace: V32 Po, Li Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon: V20
V o l u m e
3 3
I n d e x
Egyptian Cavafy, C. P. Ithaka: V19
English Alleyn, Ellen A Birthday: V10 Arnold, Matthew Dover Beach: V2 Auden, W. H. As I Walked Out One Evening: V4 Funeral Blues: V10 Muse´e des Beaux Arts: V1 September 1, 1939: V27 The Unknown Citizen: V3 Blake, William The Lamb: V12 A Poison Tree: V24 The Tyger: V2 Bradstreet, Anne To My Dear and Loving Husband: V6 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: V33 Bronte¨, Emily Old Stoic: V33 Brooke, Rupert The Soldier: V7 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Aurora Leigh: V23 Sonnet XXIX: V16 Sonnet 43: V2 Browning, Robert My Last Duchess: V1 Porphyria’s Lover: V15 Byron, Lord The Destruction of Sennacherib: V1 She Walks in Beauty: V14 When We Two Parted: V29 Carroll, Lewis Jabberwocky: V11 The Walrus and the Carpenter: V30 Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales: V14 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Kubla Khan: V5 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: V4 Donne, John Holy Sonnet 10: V2 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: V11 The Waste Land: V20 Eliot, T. S. The Hollow Men: V33 Journey of the Magi: V7 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: V1 Fenton, James The Milkfish Gatherers: V11 Finch, Anne A Nocturnal Reverie: V30
Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index
Warren, Rosanna Daylights: V13 Lake: V23 Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought from Africa to America: V29 To His Excellency General Washington: V13 Whitman, Walt Cavalry Crossing a Ford: V13 I Hear America Singing: V3 A Noiseless Patient Spider: V31 O Captain! My Captain!: V2 When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer: V22 Wilbur, Richard Beowulf: V11 Love Calls Us to the Things of This World: V29 Merlin Enthralled: V16 On Freedom’s Ground: V12 Williams, William Carlos Overture to a Dance of Locomotives: V11 Queen-Ann’s-Lace: V6 The Red Wheelbarrow: V1 Wright, Charles Black Zodiac: V10 Wright, James A Blessing: V7 Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio: V8 Yau, John Russian Letter: V26 Young, Kevin Chorale: V25
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
3 3 7
C u m u l a t i v e
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
Gray, Thomas Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: V9 Gunn, Thom The Missing: V9 Hardy, Thomas Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?: V4 The Darkling Thrush: V18 The Man He Killed: V3 Herbert, George Virtue: V25 Herrick, Robert The Night Piece: To Julia: V29 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time: V13 Hopkins, Gerard Manley Pied Beauty: V26 Housman, A. E. To an Athlete Dying Young: V7 When I Was One-and-Twenty: V4 Hughes, Ted Hawk Roosting: V4 The Horses: V32 Perfect Light: V19 Jonson, Ben On My First Son: V33 Song: To Celia: V23 Keats, John La Belle Dame sans Merci: V17 Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art: V9 Ode on a Grecian Urn: V1 Ode to a Nightingale: V3 On the Grasshopper and the Cricket: V32 When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be: V2 Kipling, Rudyard If: V22 Larkin, Philip An Arundel Tomb: V12 High Windows: V3 Toads: V4 Lawrence, D. H. Piano: V6 Levertov, Denise The Blue Rim of Memory: V17 In the Land of Shinar: V7 A Tree Telling of Orpheus: V31 Lovelace, Richard To Lucasta, Going to the Wars: V32 Loy, Mina Moreover, the Moon: V20 Marlowe, Christopher The Passionate Shepherd to His Love: V22 Marvell, Andrew To His Coy Mistress: V5 Masefield, John Cargoes: V5
338
I n d e x
Maxwell, Glyn The Nerve: V23 Milton, John [On His Blindness] Sonnet 16: V3 On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three: V17 Noyes, Alfred The Highwayman: V4 Owen, Wilfred Dulce et Decorum Est: V10 Pope, Alexander The Rape of the Lock: V12 Raine, Craig A Martian Sends a Postcard Home: V7 Raleigh, Walter, Sir The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd: V14 Rossetti, Christina A Birthday: V10 Goblin Market: V27 Remember: V14 Sassoon, Siegfried ‘‘Blighters’’: V28 Service, Robert W. The Cremation of Sam McGee: V10 Shakespeare, William Sonnet 18: V2 Sonnet 19: V9 Sonnet 29: V8 Sonnet 30: V4 Sonnet 55: V5 Sonnet 116: V3 Sonnet 130: V1 Shelley, Percy Bysshe Ode to the West Wind: V2 Ozymandias: V27 To a Sky-Lark: V32 Sidney, Philip Ye Goatherd Gods: V30 Ozymandias: V27 Smith, Stevie Not Waving but Drowning: V3 Spender, Stephen An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum: V23 Spenser, Edmund Sonnet 75: V32 Swift, Jonathan A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General: V27 Taylor, Edward Huswifery: V31 Taylor, Henry Landscape with Tractor: V10 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord The Charge of the Light Brigade: V1 The Eagle: V11 The Lady of Shalott: V15 Proem: V19 Tears, Idle Tears: V4 Ulysses: V2
P o e t r y
Williams, William Carlos Overture to a Dance of Locomotives: V11 Queen-Ann’s-Lace: V6 The Red Wheelbarrow: V1 Wordsworth, William I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: V33 Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey: V2 Wyatt, Thomas Whoso List to Hunt: V25
French Apollinaire, Guillaume Always: V24 Baudelaire, Charles Hymn to Beauty: V21 Malroux, Claire Morning Walk: V21 Rimbaud, Arthur The Drunken Boat: V28
German Amichai, Yehuda Not like a Cypress: V24 Blumenthal, Michael Inventors: V7 Erdrich, Louise Bidwell Ghost: V14 Mueller, Lisel Blood Oranges: V13 The Exhibit: V9 Rilke, Rainer Maria Archaic Torso of Apollo: V27 Childhood: V19 Roethke, Theodore My Papa’s Waltz: V3 Sachs, Nelly But Perhaps God Needs the Longing: V20 Saje´, Natasha The Art of the Novel: V23
Ghanaian Du Bois, W. E. B. The Song of the Smoke: V13
Greek Cavafy, C. P. Ithaka: V19 Sappho Fragment 2: V31 Hymn to Aphrodite: V20
Hispanic American Castillo, Ana While I Was Gone a War Began: V21 Cervantes, Lorna Dee Freeway 280: V30
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
C u m u l a t i v e
Cruz, Victor Hernandez Business: V16 Espada, Martı´ n Colibrı´: V16 Mora, Pat Elena: V33
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death: V1 The Lake Isle of Innisfree: V15 Leda and the Swan: V13 Sailing to Byzantium: V2 The Second Coming: V7
Mirabai All I Was Doing Was Breathing: V24 Ramanujan, A. K. Waterfalls in a Bank: V27 Shahid Ali, Agha Country Without a Post Office: V18 Tagore, Rabindranath 60: V18 Vazirani, Reetika Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta: V25
Amichai, Yehuda Not like a Cypress: V24
Lee, Li-Young Early in the Morning: V17 For a New Citizen of These United States: V15 The Weight of Sweetness: V11
Iranian Farrokhzaad, Faroogh A Rebirth: V21
Italian Apollinaire, Guillaume Always: V24 Montale, Eugenio On the Threshold: V22 Pavese, Cesare Two Poems for T.: V20 Ungaretti, Giuseppe Variations on Nothing: V20
Jamaican Goodison, Lorna The River Mumma Wants Out: V25 McKay, Claude The Tropics in New York: V4 Simpson, Louis In the Suburbs: V14
Japanese
I n d e x
Shapiro, Karl Auto Wreck: V3 Stern, Gerald One of the Smallest: V26
Kiowa Momaday, N. Scott Angle of Geese: V2 To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly: V11
Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index
Indian
Israeli
Indonesian
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
Lithuanian Milosz, Czeslaw From the Rising of the Sun: V29 Song of a Citizen: V16
Malaysian Lim, Shirley Geok-lin Pantoun for Chinese Women: V29
Mexican Paz, Octavio Duration: V18 Sunstone: V30 Soto, Gary Oranges: V30 Small Town with One Road: V7
Ai
Iraqi Youssef, Saadi America, America: V29
Irish Boland, Eavan Anorexic: V12 It’s a Woman’s World: V22 Outside History: V31 Carson, Ciaran The War Correspondent: V26 Grennan, Eamon Station: V21 Hartnett, Michael A Farewell to English: V10 Heaney, Seamus Digging: V5 A Drink of Water: V8 Follower: V30 Midnight: V2 The Singer’s House: V17 Muldoon, Paul Meeting the British: V7 Pineapples and Pomegranates: V22 Swift, Jonathan A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General: V27 Yeats, William Butler Easter 1916: V5
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
Reunions with a Ghost: V16 Basho , Matsuo Falling Upon Earth: V2 The Moon Glows the Same: V7 Temple Bells Die Out: V18
Jewish Bell, Marvin View: V25 Blumenthal, Michael Inventors: V7 Espada, Martı´ n Colibrı´: V16 We Live by What We See at Night: V13 HaNagid, Shmuel Two Eclipses: V33 Hirsch, Edward Omen: V22 Pastan, Linda The Cossacks: V25 Ethics: V8 Grudnow: V32 Piercy, Marge Apple sauce for Eve: V22 Barbie Doll: V9 To Be of Use: V32 Sachs, Nelly But Perhaps God Needs the Longing: V20
V o l u m e
3 3
Native American Ai Reunions with a Ghost: V16 Erdrich, Louise Bidwell Ghost: V14 Harjo, Joy Anniversary: V15 Remember: V32 Momaday, N. Scott Angle of Geese: V2 To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly: V11 Ortiz, Simon Hunger in New York City: V4 My Father’s Song: V16 Revard, Carter Birch Canoe: V5 Rose, Wendy For the White poets who would be Indian: V13 Silko, Leslie Marmon Four Mountain Wolves: V9 Story from Bear Country: V16
Nigerian Soyinka, Wole Telephone Conversation: V27
3 3 9
C u m u l a t i v e
N a t i o n a l i t y / E t h n i c i t y
I n d e x
Philippine
Merriam, Eve Onomatopoeia: V6 Pushkin, Alexander The Bronze Horseman: V28 Shapiro, Karl Auto Wreck: V3 Tsvetaeva, Marina An Attempt at Jealousy: V29 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Babii Yar: V29
Barot, Rick Bonnard’s Garden: V25
St. Lucian
Polish
Walcott, Derek A Far Cry from Africa: V6
Osage Revard, Carter Birch Canoe: V5
Peruvian Vallejo, Ce´sar The Black Heralds: V26
Herbert, Zbigniew Why The Classics: V22 Milosz, Czeslaw From the Rising of the Sun: V29 Song of a Citizen: V16 Swir, Anna Maternity: V21 Szymborska, Wisława Astonishment: V15 Conversation with a Stone: V27 Some People Like Poetry: V31 Zagajewski, Adam Self-Portrait: V25
Roman Ovid (Naso, Publius Ovidius) Metamorphoses: V22
Celan, Paul Late and Deep: V21
Russian Akhmatova, Anna Everything is Plundered: V32 Midnight Verses: V18 Requiem: V27
340
Sri Lankan Ondaatje, Michael The Cinnamon Peeler: V19 To a Sad Daughter: V8
Swedish Sandburg, Carl Chicago: V3 Cool Tombs: V6 Jazz Fantasia: V33 Hope Is a Tattered Flag: V12 Svenbro, Jesper Lepidopterology: V23 Transtro¨mer, Tomas Answers to Letters: V21
Scottish Burns, Robert A Red, Red Rose: V8 Duffy, Carol Ann Originally: V25 MacBeth, George Bedtime Story: V8
Senegalese Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought from Africa to America: V29 To His Excellency General Washington: V13
Serbian Romanian
HaNagid, Shmuel Two Eclipses: V33 Machado, Antonio The Crime Was in Granada: V23 Williams, William Carlos The Red Wheelbarrow: V1
Lazic´, Radmila Death Sentences: V22
Spanish Garcı´ a Lorca, Federico Gacela of the Dark Death: V20 Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´as: V31
P o e t r y
Vietnamese Huong, Ho Xuan Spring-Watching Pavilion: V18 Thomas, Dylan Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night: V1 Fern Hill: V3 The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower: V8
Yugoslavian Lazic´, Radmila Death Sentences: V22 Simic, Charles Classic Ballroom Dances: V33
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
Subject/Theme Index Numerical 1920s (Decade) Jazz Fantasia: 89–90, 92–93 1950s (Decade) Mushrooms: 127–128 1960s (Decade) Mushrooms: 126–128 1970s (Decade) Woman Work: 293–296
A Acceptance On My First Son: 180, 182–183 Action Classic Ballroom Dances: 11 Activism Mushrooms: 126–128 Woman Work: 294–295 Activity. See Action African American culture Sympathy: 214 Woman Work: 291 African American history Sympathy: 207–210 Woman Work: 289–290 African American literature Sympathy: 201, 208, 211–214 Afterlife The Hollow Men: 52, 58 Alliteration I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 74 Jazz Fantasia: 92 Mushrooms: 126 Sympathy: 203, 204 Woman Work: 293
Allusions The Hollow Men: 50, 55, 57–58, 61–63, 66 Ambiguity Fully Empowered: 39 The Hollow Men: 60 On My First Son: 182 American culture Woman Work: 295 American literature Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 254–261, 262–263 Anger Two Eclipses: 222, 223–224 Archetypes Fully Empowered: 46 Art On My First Son: 181 Asian American culture What For: 271–272, 280–283 Asian American history What For: 271–272 Asian American literature What For: 274 Asian Americans What For: 273–274, 282–23 Assimilation Elena: 20, 24, 29, 30 Autobiographical fiction Mushrooms: 120
B Beauty I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 69, 72 Jazz Fantasia: 98 The Lotus Flowers: 106
Bible Two Eclipses: 227, 229–231, 233–234 Bravery. See Courage Buddhism What For: 272, 275
C Care Shoulders: 187, 190 Celebration. See Joy Change (Philosophy) The Lotus Flowers: 109, 110, 114, 116 Characterization Elena: 21 Fully Empowered: 42 The Old Stoic: 160–161 Childhood The Lotus Flowers: 109–110, 113 What For: 265, 269, 274 Choice (Psychology) The Lotus Flowers: 116 Christian love On My First Son: 176–183 Christian theology On My First Son: 168–169, 176–183 Christianity On My First Son: 164 Colonial America Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 248–250 Comfort Woman Work: 291, 297, 298 Common man Jazz Fantasia: 104
3 4 1
S u b j e c t / T h e m e
I n d e x
Communications Elena: 23–26, 30 Compassion What For: 268, 270, 276 Confession On My First Son: 176–179 Confessional poetry Mushrooms: 125 Confinement Sympathy: 204 Conflict Elena: 21, 23–25, 26 The Hollow Men: 61 Mushrooms: 135 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252, 262 Confusion Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 253 Connectedness Elena: 20 The Lotus Flowers: 116 Consciousness I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 81–82 Consolation On My First Son: 168–169, 175, 177–182 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 248 Contradiction The Hollow Men: 52 Mushrooms: 132 Control (Psychology) Mushrooms: 140 Corruption The Lotus Flowers: 116 Courage Elena: 16 The Lotus Flowers: 108 Creativity Fully Empowered: 37, 39–40, 41, 46, 47 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 77, 79 Sympathy: 206, 214 Cultural conflict Elena: 24, 28, 30 Shoulders: 190, 192 Cultural identity Elena: 28, 29, 30, 32 What For: 273, 274, 282–283 Culture Elena: 32, 35 Jazz Fantasia: 97
D Dance Classic Ballroom Dances: 2, 12 Danger The Lotus Flowers: 110
342
Death Fully Empowered: 39, 47 The Hollow Men: 50, 52, 53–54 Mushrooms: 139 On My First Son: 164, 166, 167–169, 170, 175–176, 179 The Old Stoic: 145, 146, 154, 155 Two Eclipses: 219 Decay The Lotus Flowers: 110 Depression (Psychology) Mushrooms: 128 Description (Literature) What For: 284 Determination Elena: 16, 18 Dignity Woman Work: 298 Disorientation The Lotus Flowers: 114 Divine judgment Two Eclipses: 222, 224, 226 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252 Divine justice On My First Son: 166 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 249 Divine providence On My First Son: 168 Doubt Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 253 Dreariness Classic Ballroom Dances: 12 Duty Fully Empowered: 39, 46
E East European history Classic Ballroom Dances: 8–9 Elegy On My First Son: 169–170, 172, 175–176 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 248 Embarrassment Elena: 18, 20, 25, 26 Emotions I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 79 On My First Son: 175, 180 Shoulders: 190 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 248, 261 What For: 276 Emptiness The Hollow Men: 63–67 Endurance Classic Ballroom Dances: 3 English history On My First Son: 170–171
P o e t r y
English literature, 1558-1603 (Elizabethan) On My First Son: 173–175 Epitaphs On My First Son: 169–170, 172, 175–176, 181 Ethics The Old Stoic: 144 Ethnic identity Elena: 31 Sympathy: 217 European history The Hollow Men: 56–57 Evil The Old Stoic: 162 Exclusion. See Isolation Exile Classic Ballroom Dances: 14 Exploitation Woman Work: 287, 292, 298
F Faith Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 245, 246, 248, 249, 250–253, 261 Familial love On My First Son: 166, 177–183 What For: 270, 276–277 Family The Old Stoic: 145 What For: 265, 270–271 Family relationships Mushrooms: 135 Fantasy fiction The Old Stoic: 143, 148–149, 151–154 Fate The Lotus Flowers: 106, 109–110, 116 Father-child relationships On My First Son: 166, 177–178 Shoulders: 187 What For: 265, 267–269, 269–270, 274, 276 Fear Elena: 16, 18, 20, 21, 26 Two Eclipses: 224 Female-male relations Elena: 33–34, 35 Feminism Elena: 28–30, 35 The Lotus Flowers: 112 Mushrooms: 120, 123, 124, 125–126, 126–127, 131–133, 133–140 Free verse Elena: 16, 18, 21 Jazz Fantasia: 91–92, 95 The Lotus Flowers: 114 Shoulders: 188
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
V o l u m e
3 3
S u b j e c t / T h e m e
Freedom The Old Stoic: 145, 154 Sympathy: 206 Friendship The Old Stoic: 145 Frustration Elena: 20 Sympathy: 205 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 253
G
H Happiness Fully Empowered: 40 Heaven Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 245–456, 248, 253 Helpfulness Shoulders: 187 Heritage What For: 270–271, 276 Heroes Mushrooms: 129, 131–133 Hispanic American literature Elena: 23 Fully Empowered: 42–43 Hispanic Americans Elena: 16, 22, 28–35 Hope Elena: 21 The Hollow Men: 63–64, 66, 67 Shoulders: 190 Two Eclipses: 222, 224 Human condition Jazz Fantasia: 104 The Old Stoic: 145, 153 Humanism Jazz Fantasia: 101
P o e t r y
f o r
S t u d e n t s ,
J
I
K
Idealism Jazz Fantasia: 101 Identity Elena: 34 Mushrooms: 120, 125 What For: 274, 282–23 Ignorance (Theory of knowledge) The Lotus Flowers: 116 Imagery (Literature) Classic Ballroom Dances: 1, 3–4, 7, 8 Elena: 25 Fully Empowered: 37, 39, 41–42, 45 The Hollow Men: 55, 58, 60–62, 67 Jazz Fantasia: 89 The Lotus Flowers: 106, 110, 111, 117 Mushrooms: 122, 129 Sympathy: 214 Two Eclipses: 226, 231 What For: 271 Woman Work: 287, 293, 297 Imagination I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 72–73, 77, 81 The Old Stoic: 156–157 Immigrant life Elena: 16, 20, 23–26 Immortality The Old Stoic: 154 Imprisonment Sympathy: 204, 206 Independence Elena: 33 Individual responsibility Shoulders: 188 Industrialization Jazz Fantasia: 92–93 Injustice Jazz Fantasia: 90–91, 104 Innocence The Lotus Flowers: 106, 109–110, 116, 118 What For: 265, 268–269 Intuition Fully Empowered: 40 Irony Elena: 26 The Hollow Men: 55, 65 Sympathy: 213, 214 Isolation Elena: 16, 18, 20, 21, 23–24, 25, 26
V o l u m e
3 3
Jazz Jazz Fantasia: 86–87, 89, 94–96 Jewish culture Two Eclipses: 231–237, 238–241 Joy Fully Empowered: 37, 38, 40–41 What For: 265 Woman Work: 299–300
Kindness Shoulders: 187, 188 Knowledge Fully Empowered: 40–41, 46
Subject/Theme Index
God The Old Stoic: 147, 154–155 Two Eclipses: 221–224, 225–226 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 245, 248, 252, 253 Good and evil Two Eclipses: 226 Grandparent-grandchild relationships What For: 267, 270–271, 274 Grief On My First Son: 164, 166, 167, 172, 175, 177, 179, 180 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 248, 250, 252, 253 Guilt (Psychology) On My First Son: 175, 179 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252
Humiliation Elena: 16 Humility Mushrooms: 123, 132 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 249 Husband-wife relationships Elena: 25–26
I n d e x
L Landscape Jazz Fantasia: 98–100 Language and languages Classic Ballroom Dances: 13–14 Elena: 18–20, 21, 23–26, 27, 30–31, 32 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 82–84 Jazz Fantasia: 101–102, 104 Mushrooms: 135 What For: 274, 276, 277, 284–285 Life after death. See Afterlife Life cycles (Biology) Mushrooms: 123–124 Life (Philosophy) Fully Empowered: 39, 40–41, 47 Light and darkness Fully Empowered: 39, 42 Loneliness Classic Ballroom Dances: 6, 12 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 77, 79 Loss On My First Son: 164, 175 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 245, 246, 248, 250, 252, 253, 261 Lost Generation The Hollow Men: 56–57 Love Elena: 16 The Old Stoic: 144, 161 Shoulders: 187, 189–190 Lyric poetry The Old Stoic: 148 Sympathy: 207, 215 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 246–248
M Magic What For: 274–275 Marginalization Mushrooms: 137 Woman Work: 297
3 4 3
S u b j e c t / T h e m e
I n d e x
Materialism The Old Stoic: 144 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 250, 261 Medieval literature Two Eclipses: 232–237, 238 Meditation Two Eclipses: 219 What For: 280 Memory Elena: 19 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 71, 72–73, 80, 83 On My First Son: 182–183 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 253 What For: 267, 274, 275 Metaphors Classic Ballroom Dances: 7 Fully Empowered: 38, 39, 40, 41, 45 The Hollow Men: 53, 55 The Lotus Flowers: 111 Mushrooms: 122, 123, 132, 137 Shoulders: 185 Sympathy: 204, 206, 214 Two Eclipses: 225–226 Metaphysics I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 83 Mexican American culture Elena: 23 Mexican culture Elena: 28, 29 Mexican history Elena: 21–22 Middle class Sympathy: 210 Middle Eastern culture Shoulders: 193–194 Midwestern United States Jazz Fantasia: 90, 93–95, 100–101 Modernism (Literature) The Hollow Men: 50, 51, 55–56 Morality Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243 Mortality The Hollow Men: 63 The Lotus Flowers: 106, 110–111, 113 Mother-child relationships Elena: 20, 21, 23–26, 32–33 Motherhood Elena: 33 Motion Classic Ballroom Dances: 3 Movement. See Motion Multiculturalism Shoulders: 189–190, 196–199 Music The Hollow Men: 64, 67 Jazz Fantasia: 86–87, 92, 97
344
The Lotus Flowers: 117 The Old Stoic: 155–156 Mythology Jazz Fantasia: 100–101 Mushrooms: 129, 131–133
N Narrative poetry The Lotus Flowers: 122 Narrators Elena: 21 Nature I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 69, 71–72, 79 Jazz Fantasia: 99–100 The Lotus Flowers: 106, 111 Mushrooms: 120 On My First Son: 181 The Old Stoic: 147, 154–155 Sympathy: 215 Two Eclipses: 219, 224–225 What For: 274, 276 Woman Work: 287, 290, 291, 292, 296, 297, 298 Nonviolence The Hollow Men: 60–61 Nothingness Fully Empowered: 47
O Objectification Mushrooms: 137–138, 140 Obligation. See Duty Observation Classic Ballroom Dances: 6–7 Old age Classic Ballroom Dances: 4, 6, 10 Onomatopoeia Jazz Fantasia: 91 Opposites Fully Empowered: 40, 41, 47 Oppression (Politics) Mushrooms: 122, 124, 125, 133, 136, 139, 140 Woman Work: 296
P Pain On My First Son: 166 Sympathy: 204 What For: 268, 270, 276 Paradoxes Fully Empowered: 39, 41 The Hollow Men: 52 Mushrooms: 123 Parallelism Mushrooms: 137 What For: 271 Parody The Hollow Men: 65
P o e t r y
Past Elena: 20, 21 Patriarchy Elena: 34–35 Mushrooms: 140 Peace I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 79 The Old Stoic: 144 Woman Work: 290, 297 Perfection The Old Stoic: 144, 147 Persistence. See Determination Persona. See Characterization Personification I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 74 Jazz Fantasia: 92 Mushrooms: 122–123, 126 Woman Work: 293 Perversity Classic Ballroom Dances: 3 Place Elena: 30 Jazz Fantasia: 98 What For: 267, 276 Pleasure I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 79 Point of view (Literature) The Lotus Flowers: 112 Shoulders: 188–189 Politics Fully Empowered: 48 Postmodernism What For: 274 Poverty Elena: 35 Jazz Fantasia: 93–94, 97, 100–101 Power (Philosophy) Mushrooms: 120, 123, 126, 129, 131, 133, 139, 140 The Old Stoic: 145 Prayer The Old Stoic: 145 Sympathy: 204 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252 Predestination The Old Stoic: 147 Prejudice Elena: 28, 32 Pride On My First Son: 179 Prophecy Mushrooms: 133 Protest Woman Work: 296–298 Puns I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 82–83 On My First Son: 166
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S u b j e c t / T h e m e
Puritanism Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 246, 248–249, 250, 252, 261 Purity Fully Empowered: 45
R
S Sadness Classic Ballroom Dances: 6, 12 Salvation The Old Stoic: 146–147, 153
P o e t r y
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Simplicity Elena: 25 Jazz Fantasia: 103, 104 On My First Son: 175 Shoulders: 185, 190 Sin On My First Son: 176–177, 178, 180 Two Eclipses: 224 Slavery Sympathy: 201, 207–208 Woman Work: 289, 290–291, 296–298 Social class Elena: 32 Solitude Fully Empowered: 45 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 79, 80 Sorrow Classic Ballroom Dances: 6 Sympathy: 206 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252, 253 Soul. See Spirituality Southern United States The Lotus Flowers: 117 Woman Work: 289–290 Southwestern United States. See Western United States Spanish history Two Eclipses: 226–227 Spirituality The Hollow Men: 58, 63–65 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 83 The Old Stoic: 162 Stereotypes (Psychology) Jazz Fantasia: 100–101 Mushrooms: 140 Shoulders: 196–197 Sympathy: 210, 211–212 Stoicism On My First Son: 179 The Old Stoic: 142, 145, 146–148, 149–150 Storytelling The Lotus Flowers: 118 Strength Jazz Fantasia: 103 Mushrooms: 132, 139 Struggle Elena: 16, 20 The Hollow Men: 58 Sublimity I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 81–82 Suffering Sympathy: 206 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 249, 253 What For: 270 Surrealism Classic Ballroom Dances: 1–2, 7–8, 9, 13, 14 Fully Empowered: 48
3 4 5
Subject/Theme Index
Race relations Jazz Fantasia: 94 Sympathy: 208 Racial identity. See Ethnic identity Racial violence Sympathy: 209–210 Racism Sympathy: 201, 204–206, 209–210 Reality The Hollow Men: 61 Reason The Old Stoic: 147–148 Rebirth Mushrooms: 131, 139–140 Reflection Two Eclipses: 219 Regret Sympathy: 203 Religion The Hollow Men: 54–55, 58–60 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 83 What For: 274, 275 Religious beliefs The Hollow Men: 58–60 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 248–249, 252, 254–255, 261 Renewal The Hollow Men: 50 Repetition The Hollow Men: 55, 64, 65, 66 Mushrooms: 123 Woman Work: 293 Rhythm Classic Ballroom Dances: 3 Fully Empowered: 46 Jazz Fantasia: 88, 103 Woman Work: 287, 293 Rituals On My First Son: 176 Romanticism I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 69, 70, 74–76 The Old Stoic: 155–156 Rural life The Lotus Flowers: 106, 113, 117
Seasons Classic Ballroom Dances: 12 Self awareness. See Self realization Self control The Old Stoic: 145, 148 Self doubt Elena: 21 Self examination (Psychology) Mushrooms: 124–125 Self identity Classic Ballroom Dances: 14 Mushrooms: 124, 133–140 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 254–261 Woman Work: 287, 291 Self knowledge Fully Empowered: 40, 45, 46 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 254–261 Self realization Mushrooms: 123 Self worth Elena: 33 Woman Work: 298 Sensitivity Jazz Fantasia: 102 What For: 276, 278 Sensuality Shoulders: 187 Separation (Psychology) Elena: 20, 25, 28, 32 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 72, 75, 77 Servitude Woman Work: 297 Setting (Literature) The Old Stoic: 161 Sex roles Mushrooms: 133–140 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 249–250 Woman Work: 291–292, 298–299 Sexual identity Mushrooms: 133–140 Sexual politics Mushrooms: 133–140 Sexuality The Old Stoic: 145 Shame Elena: 18, 20, 21, 25 Mushrooms: 132 On My First Son: 175 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 252 Silence Jazz Fantasia: 92 Mushrooms: 122, 132, 133–140 Similes Jazz Fantasia: 92 The Lotus Flowers: 109–110, 111, 114 Two Eclipses: 225
I n d e x
S u b j e c t / T h e m e
I n d e x
Survival The Lotus Flowers: 113 Symbolism Fully Empowered: 37, 41, 46, 47 The Hollow Men: 65 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 77 The Lotus Flowers: 110, 116 Mushrooms: 120, 125–126, 138 The Old Stoic: 161 Shoulders: 188 Sympathy: 214 Sympathy Sympathy: 206
T Tenderness. See Sensitivity Tension The Hollow Men: 60–61 Jazz Fantasia: 89 The Lotus Flowers: 116 Mushrooms: 124 On My First Son: 175 Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 250, 252, 261 Tradition Classic Ballroom Dances: 3 Elena: 29 Tragedy (Calamities) Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 243, 245, 250, 252
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Tranquility. See Peace Transcendence The Old Stoic: 154 Woman Work: 292 Transcendentalism I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 83 Transformation Elena: 26, 29 On My First Son: 182–183 Translation Two Eclipses: 231–237, 237–241 Triumph Mushrooms: 124, 133 Trust (Psychology) Shoulders: 187
U Understanding Elena: 18, 20 Fully Empowered: 40 On My First Son: 183 Unity I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud: 81–82 Universality Shoulders: 187, 188, 189–190 Urban life Jazz Fantasia: 90, 92–94, 104
P o e t r y
V Vanity Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666: 245, 248, 250, 253 Victimization Mushrooms: 140 Virtue The Old Stoic: 144
W Weakness Mushrooms: 132 Wealth The Old Stoic: 144 Western United States Elena: 28–29 Wilderness The Lotus Flowers: 108 Work Fully Empowered: 46 Woman Work: 290, 291, 296–297 World War I, 1914-1918 The Hollow Men: 56 World War II, 1939-1945 Classic Ballroom Dances: 8–9
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Cumulative Index of First Lines A A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket,— (The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket) V6:158 ‘‘A cold coming we had of it (Journey of the Magi) V7:110 A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck (The Cobweb) V17:50 A gentle spring evening arrives (Spring-Watching Pavilion) V18:198 A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, (Cavalry Crossing a Ford) V13:50 A narrow Fellow in the grass (A Narrow Fellow in the Grass) V11:127 A noiseless patient spider, (A Noiseless Patient Spider) V31:190–91 A pine box for me. I mean it. (Last Request) V14: 231 A poem should be palpable and mute (Ars Poetica) V5:2 A stone from the depths that has witnessed the seas drying up (Song of a Citizen) V16:125 A tourist came in from Orbitville, (Southbound on the Freeway) V16:158 A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt (A Far Cry from Africa) V6:60 a woman precedes me up the long rope, (Climbing) V14:113 About me the night moonless wimples the mountains (Vancouver Lights) V8:245
About suffering they were never wrong (Muse´e des Beaux Arts) V1:148 Across Roblin Lake, two shores away, (Wilderness Gothic) V12:241 After the double party (Air for Mercury) V20:2–3 After the party ends another party begins (Social Life) V19:251 After you finish your work (Ballad of Orange and Grape) V10:17 Again I’ve returned to this country (The Country Without a Post Office) V18:64 ‘‘Ah, are you digging on my grave (Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?) V4:2 All Greece hates (Helen) V6:92 All my existence is a dark sign a dark (A Rebirth) V21:193–194 All night long the hockey pictures (To a Sad Daughter) V8:230 All over Genoa (Trompe l’Oeil) V22:216 All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding (Names of Horses) V8:141 Also Ulysses once—that other war. (Kilroy) V14:213 Always (Always) V24:15 Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine. (Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon) V20:59–60 Anasazi (Anasazi) V9:2 ‘‘And do we remember our living lives?’’ (Memory) V21:156
And God stepped out on space (The Creation) V1:19 And what if I spoke of despair—who doesn’t (And What If I Spoke of Despair) V19:2 Animal bones and some mossy tent rings (Lament for the Dorsets) V5:190 Any force— (All It Takes) V23:15 April is the cruellest month, breeding (The Waste Land) V20:248–252 As I perceive (The Gold Lily) V5:127 As I walked out one evening (As I Walked Out One Evening) V4:15 As I was going down impassive Rivers, (The Drunken Boat) V28:83 As in an illuminated page, whose busy edges (Bonnard’s Garden) V25:33 As virtuous men pass mildly away (A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning) V11:201 As you set out for Ithaka (Ithaka) V19:114 At five in the afternoon. (Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´ as) V31:128–30 At noon in the desert a panting lizard (At the Bomb Testing Site) V8:2 At six I lived for spells: (What For) V33:266 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! (Old Ironsides) V9:172
B Back then, before we came (On Freedom’s Ground) V12:186
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Bananas ripe and green, and gingerroot (The Tropics in New York) V4:255 Be happy if the wind inside the orchard (On the Threshold) V22:128 Because I could not stop for Death— (Because I Could Not Stop for Death) V2:27 Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? (Leda and the Swan) V13:182 Before you know what kindness really is (Kindness) V24:84–85 Below long pine winds, a stream twists. (Jade Flower Palace) V32:145 Bent double, like old beggars under slacks, (Dulce et Decorum Est) V10:109 Between my finger and my thumb (Digging) V5:70 Beware of ruins: they have a treacherous charm (Beware of Ruins) V8:43 Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art— (Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art) V9:44 But perhaps God needs the longing, wherever else should it dwell, (But Perhaps God Needs the Longing) V20:41 By the rude bridge that arched the flood (Concord Hymn) V4:30 By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river (The Garden Shukkeien) V18:107
C Cassandra’s kind of crying was (Three To’s and an Oi) V24:264 Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light, (To His Excellency General Washington) V13:212 Come with me into those things that have felt his despair for so long— (Come with Me) V6:31 Complacencies of the peignoir, and late (Sunday Morning) V16:189 Composed in the Tower, before his execution (‘‘More Light! More Light!’’) V6:119
D Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix (Black Zodiac) V10:46 Dear Sirs: (In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers) V32:129
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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee (Holy Sonnet 10) V2:103 Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws (Sonnet 19) V9:210 Disoriented, the newly dead try to turn back, (Our Side) V24:177 Do not go gentle into that good night (Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night) V1:51 Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind (War Is Kind) V9:252 Don Arturo says: (Business) V16:2 Drink to me only with thine eyes, (Song: To Celia) V23:270–271 (Dumb, (A Grafted Tongue) V12:92
E Each day the shadow swings (In the Land of Shinar) V7:83 Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible (It’s like This) V23:138–139 Each night she waits by the road (Bidwell Ghost) V14:2 Even when you know what people are capable of, (Knowledge) V25:113 Everything has been plundered, betrayed, sold out, (Everything Is Plundered) V32:113
For three years, out of key with his time, (Hugh Selwyn Mauberley) V16:26 Forgive me for thinking I saw (For a New Citizen of These United States) V15:55 From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State (The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner) V2:41 From the air to the air, like an empty net, (The Heights of Macchu Picchu) V28:137
G Gardener: Sir, I encountered Death (Incident in a Rose Garden) V14:190 Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may, (To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time ) V13:226 Gazelle, I killed you (Ode to a Drum) V20:172–173 Glory be to God for dappled things— (Pied Beauty) V26:161 Go down, Moses (Go Down, Moses) V11:42 God save America, (America, America) V29:2 Grandmothers who wring the necks (Classic Ballroom Dances) V33:3 Gray mist wolf (Four Mountain Wolves) V9:131
F
H
Face of the skies (Moreover, the Moon) V20:153 Falling upon earth (Falling Upon Earth) V2:64 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; (On My First Son) V33:166 Far far from gusty waves these children’s faces. (An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum) V23:88–89 Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury’s (Slam, Dunk, & Hook) V30:176–177 First, the self. Then, the observing self. (I, I, I) V26:97 Five years have past; five summers, with the length (Tintern Abbey) V2:249 Flesh is heretic. (Anorexic) V12:2 For a long time the butterfly held a prominent place in psychology (Lepidopterology) V23:171–172 For Jews, the Cossacks are always coming. (The Cossacks) V25:70
‘‘Had he and I but met (The Man He Killed) V3:167 Had we but world enough, and time (To His Coy Mistress) V5:276 Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! (To a SkyLark) V32:251 Half a league, half a league (The Charge of the Light Brigade) V1:2 Having a Coke with You (Having a Coke with You) V12:105 He clasps the crag with crooked hands (The Eagle) V11:30 He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be (The Unknown Citizen) V3:302 He was seen, surrounded by rifles, (The Crime Was in Granada) V23:55–56 Hear the sledges with the bells— (The Bells) V3:46 Heart, you bully, you punk, I’m wrecked, I’m shocked (One Is One) V24:158 Her body is not so white as (QueenAnn’s-Lace) V6:179
P o e t r y
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C u m u l a t i v e
I I am fourteen (Hanging Fire) V32:93 I am not a painter, I am a poet (Why I Am Not a Painter) V8:258 I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions (Mirror) V1:116 I am the Smoke King (The Song of the Smoke) V13:196 I am trying to pry open your casket (Dear Reader) V10:85 I became a creature of light (The Mystery) V15:137 I cannot love the Brothers Wright (Reactionary Essay on Applied Science) V9:199
P o e t r y
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I caught a tremendous fish (The Fish) V31:44 I died for Beauty—but was scarce (I Died for Beauty) V28:174 I don’t mean to make you cry. (Monologue for an Onion) V24:120–121 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (I felt a Funeral in my Brain) V13:137 I gave birth to life. (Maternity) V21:142–143 I have just come down from my father (The Hospital Window) V11:58 I have met them at close of day (Easter 1916) V5:91 I have sown beside all waters in my day. (A Black Man Talks of Reaping) V32:20 I haven’t the heart to say (To an Unknown Poet) V18:221 I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear (I Hear America Singing) V3:152 I heard a Fly buzz—when I died— (I Heard a Fly Buzz— When I Died—) V5:140 I know that I shall meet my fate (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death) V1:76 I know what the caged bird feels, alas! (Sympathy) V33:203 I leant upon a coppice gate (The Darkling Thrush) V18:74 I lie down on my side in the moist grass (Omen) v22:107 I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. (Wild Swans) V17:221 I met a traveller from an antique land (Ozymandias) V27:173 I prove a theorem and the house expands: (Geometry) V15:68 I saw that a star had broken its rope (Witness) V26:285 I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, (I go Back to May 1937) V17:112 I shook your hand before I went. (Mastectomy) V26:122 I sit in one of the dives (September 1, 1939) V27:234 I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed (Hawk Roosting) V4:55 I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: (An Ancient Gesture) V31:3 I thought wearing an evergreen dress (Pine) V23:223–224 I, too, sing America. (I, Too) V30:99 I wandered lonely as a cloud (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) V33:71
V o l u m e
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o f
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L i n e s
I was angry with my friend; (A Poison Tree) V24:195–196 I was born in the congo (EgoTripping) V28:112 I was born too late and I am much too old, (Death Sentences) V22:23 I was born under the mudbank (Seeing You) V24:244–245 I was sitting in mcsorley’s. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing. (i was sitting in mcsorley’s) V13:151 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, (The Lake Isle of Innisfree) V15:121 If all the world and love were young, (The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepard) V14:241 If ever two were one, then surely we (To My Dear and Loving Husband) V6:228 If every time their minds drifted, (What the Poets Could Have Been) V26:261 If I should die, think only this of me (The Soldier) V7:218 If you can keep your head when all about you (If) V22:54–55 If you want my apartment, sleep in it (Rent) V25:164 I’m delighted to see you (The Constellation Orion) V8:53 ‘‘Imagine being the first to say: surveillance,’’ (Inventors) V7:97 Impatient for home, (Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End) V24:214–215 In 1790 a woman could die by falling (The Art of the Novel) V23:29 In 1936, a child (Blood Oranges) V13:34 In a while they rose and went out aimlessly riding, (Merlin Enthralled) V16:72 In China (Lost Sister) V5:216 In ethics class so many years ago (Ethics) V8:88 In Flanders fields the poppies blow (In Flanders Fields) V5:155 In India in their lives they happen (Ways to Live) V16:228 In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, (The Rhodora) V17:191 In such a night, when every louder wind (A Nocturnal Reverie) V30:119–120 In the bottom drawer of my desk . . . (Answers to Letters) V21:30–31
3 4 9
Cumulative Index of First Lines
Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee; (The Night Piece: To Julia) V29:206 Her eyes were coins of porter and her West (A Farewell to English) V10:126 Here, above, (The Man-Moth) V27:135 Here they are. The soft eyes open (The Heaven of Animals) V6:75 His Grace! impossible! what dead! (A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General) V27:216 His speed and strength, which is the strength of ten (His Speed and Strength) V19:96 Hog Butcher for the World (Chicago) V3:61 Hold fast to dreams (Dream Variations) V15:42 Hope is a tattered flag and a dream out of time. (Hope is a Tattered Flag) V12:120 ‘‘Hope’’ is the thing with feathers— (‘‘Hope’’ Is the Thing with Feathers) V3:123 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways (Sonnet 43) V2:236 How is your life with the other one, (An Attempt at Jealousy) V29:23 How shall we adorn (Angle of Geese) V2:2 How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, (On His Having Arrived at the Age of TwentyThree) V17:159 How would it be if you took yourself off (Landscape with Tractor) V10:182 Hunger crawls into you (Hunger in New York City) V4:79
I n d e x
C u m u l a t i v e
I n d e x
o f
F i r s t
In the evening (Another Night in the Ruins) V26:12 In the groves of Africa from their natural wonder (An African Elegy) V13:3 In the Shreve High football stadium (Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio) V8:17 In the sixty-eight years (Accounting) V21:2–3 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan (Kubla Khan) V5:172 Ink runs from the corners of my mouth (Eating Poetry) V9:60 Is it the boy in me who’s looking out (The Boy) V19:14 It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted. (Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter) V17:63 It is an ancient Mariner (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) V4:127 It is in the small things we see it. (Courage) V14:125 It is said, the past (Russian Letter) V26:181 It little profits that an idle king (Ulysses) V2:278 It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day (Casey at the Bat) V5:57 It must be troubling for the god who loves you (The God Who Loves You) V20:88 It seems vainglorious and proud (The Conquerors) V13:67 It starts with a low rumbling, white static, (Rapture) V21:181 It was in and about the Martinmas time (Barbara Allan) V7:10 It was many and many a year ago (Annabel Lee) V9:14 It was not dying: everybody died. (Losses) V31:167-68 It was the schooner Hesperus, (The Wreck of the Hesperus) V31:317 Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating (Auto Wreck) V3:31 I’ve got the children to tend (Woman Work) V33:289 I’ve known rivers; (The Negro Speaks of Rivers) V10:197
J Januaries, Nature greets our eyes (Brazil, January 1, 1502) V6:15 Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota (A Blessing) V7:24
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L i n e s
just once (For the White poets who would be Indian) V13:112
L l(a (l(a) V1:85 Las casitas near the gray cannery, (Freeway 280) V30:62 Leave Crete and come to me now, to that holy temple, (Fragment 2) V31:63 Legs! (Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted) V29:262 Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet 116) V3:288 Let us console you. (Allegory) V23:2–3 Listen, my children, and you shall hear (Paul Revere’s Ride) V2:178 Little Lamb, who made thee? (The Lamb) V12:134 Long long ago when the world was a wild place (Bedtime Story) V8:32
M Made of the first gray light (One of the Smallest) V26:141 maggie and milly and molly and may (maggie & milly & molly & may) V12:149 Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table (The Death of the Hired Man) V4:42 May breath for a dead moment cease as jerking your (Curse) V26:75 Men with picked voices chant the names (Overture to a Dance of Locomotives) V11:143 Morning and evening (Goblin Market) V27:92 ‘‘Mother dear, may I go downtown (Ballad of Birmingham) V5:17 Much Madness is divinest Sense— (Much Madness is Divinest Sense) V16:86 My black face fades (Facing It) V5:109 My father stands in the warm evening (Starlight) V8:213 My friend, are you sleeping? (Two Eclipses) V33:220 My grandmothers were strong. (Lineage) V31:145–46 My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains (Ode to a Nightingale) V3:228 My heart is like a singing bird (A Birthday) V10:33 My life closed twice before its close— (My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close) V8:127
P o e t r y
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree (After Apple Picking) V32:3 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130) V1:247 My uncle in East Germany (The Exhibit) V9:107
N Nature’s first green is gold (Nothing Gold Can Stay) V3:203 No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness (The Weight of Sweetness) V11:230 No monument stands over Babii Yar. (Babii Yar) V29:38 Nobody heard him, the dead man (Not Waving but Drowning) V3:216 Not like a cypress, (Not like a Cypress) V24:135 Not marble nor the gilded monuments (Sonnet 55) V5:246 Not the memorized phone numbers. (What Belongs to Us) V15:196 Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs (Fern Hill) V3:92 Now as I watch the progress of the plague (The Missing) V9:158 Now I rest my head on the satyr’s carved chest, (The Satyr’s Heart) V22:187 Now one might catch it see it (Fading Light) V21:49
O O Captain! my Captain, our fearful trip is done (O Captain! My Captain!) V2:146 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens (Psalm 8) V9:182 O my Luve’s like a red, red rose (A Red, Red Rose) V8:152 O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, (La Belle Dame sans Merci) V17:18 ‘‘O where ha’ you been, Lord Randal, my son? (Lord Randal) V6:105 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being (Ode to the West Wind) V2:163 Oh, but it is dirty! (Filling Station) V12:57 old age sticks (old age sticks) V3:246 On a shore washed by desolate waves, he stood, (The Bronze Horseman) V28:27
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P Pentagon code (Smart and Final Iris) V15:183 Poised between going on and back, pulled (The Base Stealer) V12:30
Q Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir (Cargoes) V5:44 Quite difficult, belief. (Chorale) V25:51
R Recognition in the body (In Particular) V20:125 Red men embraced my body’s whiteness (Birch Canoe) V5:31 Remember me when I am gone away (Remember) V14:255 Remember the sky you were born under, (Remember) V32:185 Riches I hold in light esteem, (Old Stoic) V33:143
S Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? (Sonnet 18) V2:222 She came every morning to draw water (A Drink of Water) V8:66 She reads, of course, what he’s doing, shaking Nixon’s hand, (The
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Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives) V28:273 She sang beyond the genius of the sea. (The Idea of Order at Key West) V13:164 She walks in beauty, like the night (She Walks in Beauty) V14:268 She was my grandfather’s second wife. Coming late (My Grandmother’s Plot in the Family Cemetery) V27:154 Side by side, their faces blurred, (An Arundel Tomb) V12:17 Since the professional wars— (Midnight) V2:130 Since then, I work at night. (Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning) V21:240 S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) V1:97 Sky black (Duration) V18:93 Sleepless as Prospero back in his bedroom (Darwin in 1881) V13:83 so much depends (The Red Wheelbarrow) V1:219 So the man spread his blanket on the field (A Tall Man Executes a Jig) V12:228 So the sky wounded you, jagged at the heart, (Daylights) V13:101 Softly, in the dark, a woman is singing to me (Piano) V6:145 Some say it’s in the reptilian dance (The Greatest Grandeur) V18:119 Some say the world will end in fire (Fire and Ice) V7:57 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall (Mending Wall) V5:231 Sometimes walking late at night (Butcher Shop) V7:43 Sometimes, a lion with a prophet’s beard (For An Assyrian Frieze) V9:120 Sometimes, in the middle of the lesson (Music Lessons) V8:117 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond (somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond) V19:265 South of the bridge on Seventeenth (Fifteen) V2:78 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, (Funeral Blues) V10:139 Strong Men, riding horses. In the West (Strong Men, Riding Horses) V4:209 Such places are too still for history, (Deep Woods) V14:138
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Sundays too my father got up early (Those Winter Sundays) V1:300 Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, (Virtue) V25:263 Swing low sweet chariot (Swing Low Sweet Chariot) V1:283
T Take heart, monsieur, four-fifths of this province (For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin) V12:78 Take sheds and stalls from Billingsgate, (The War Correspondent) V26:235 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean (Tears, Idle Tears) V4:220 Tell me not, in mournful numbers (A Psalm of Life) V7:165 Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, (To Lucasta, Going to the Wars) V32:291 Temple bells die out. (Temple Bells Die Out) V18:210 That is no country for old men. The young (Sailing to Byzantium) V2:207 That negligible bit of sand which slides (Variations on Nothing) V20:234 That time of drought the embered air (Drought Year) V8:78 That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall (My Last Duchess) V1:165 The apparition of these faces in the crowd (In a Station of the Metro) V2:116 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold (The Destruction of Sennacherib) V1:38 The bored child at the auction (The Wings) V28:242 The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder (Hurt Hawks) V3:138 The bud (Saint Francis and the Sow) V9:222 The Bustle in a House (The Bustle in a House) V10:62 The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard (Out, Out—) V10:212 The couple on the left of me (Walk Your Body Down) V26:219 The courage that my mother had (The Courage that My Mother Had) V3:79 The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) V9:73
Cumulative Index of First Lines
On either side the river lie (The Lady of Shalott) V15:95 On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite (60) V18:3 Once some people were visiting Chekhov (Chocolates) V11:17 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary (The Raven) V1:200 One day I’ll lift the telephone (Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead) V14:154 One day I wrote her name upon the strand, (Sonnet 75) V32:215 One foot down, then hop! It’s hot (Harlem Hopscotch) V2:93 one shoe on the roadway presents (A Pie´d) V3:16 Our vision is our voice (An Anthem) V26:34 Out of the hills of Habersham, (Song of the Chattahoochee) V14:283 Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day (The Wood-Pile) V6:251 Oysters we ate (Oysters) V4:91
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The fiddler crab fiddles, glides and dithers, (Fiddler Crab) V23:111–112 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower (The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower) V8:101 The grasses are light brown (September) V23:258–259 The green lamp flares on the table (This Life) V1:293 The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin (‘‘Blighters’’) V28:3 The ills I sorrow at (Any Human to Another) V3:2 The instructor said (Theme for English B) V6:194 The king sits in Dumferling toune (Sir Patrick Spens) V4:177 The land was overmuch like scenery (Beowulf) V11:2 The last time I saw it was 1968. (The Hiding Place) V10:152 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (Psalm 23) V4:103 The man who sold his lawn to standard oil (The War Against the Trees) V11:215 The moon glows the same (The Moon Glows the Same) V7:152 The old South Boston Aquarium stands (For the Union Dead) V7:67 The others bent their heads and started in (‘‘Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School’’) V9:238 The pale nuns of St. Joseph are here (Island of Three Marias) V11:79 The Phoenix comes of flame and dust (The Phoenix) V10:226 The plants of the lake (Two Poems for T.) V20:218 The poetry of earth is never dead: (On the Grasshopper and the Cricket) V32:161 The rain set early in to-night: (Porphyria’s Lover) V15:151 The river brought down (How We Heard the Name) V10:167 The rusty spigot (Onomatopoeia) V6:133 The sea is calm tonight (Dover Beach) V2:52 The sea sounds insincere (The Milkfish Gatherers) V11:111 The slow overture of rain, (Mind) V17:145 The Soul selects her own Society— (The Soul Selects Her Own Society) V1:259
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The summer that I was ten— (The Centaur) V30:20 ‘‘The sun was shining on the sea, (The Walrus and the Carpenter) V30:258–259 The surface of the pond was mostly green— (The Lotus Flowers) V33:107 The time you won your town the race (To an Athlete Dying Young) V7:230 The way sorrow enters the bone (The Blue Rim of Memory) V17:38 The whiskey on your breath (My Papa’s Waltz) V3:191 The white ocean in which birds swim (Morning Walk) V21:167 The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees (The Highwayman) V4:66 The windows were open and the morning air was, by the smell of lilac and some darker flowering shrub, filled with the brown and chirping trills of birds. (Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance) V27:291 There are blows in life, so hard . . . I just don’t know! (The Black Heralds) V26:47 There are strange things done in the midnight sun (The Cremation of Sam McGee) V10:75 There have been rooms for such a short time (The Horizons of Rooms) V15:79 There is a hunger for order, (A Thirst Against) V20:205 There is no way not to be excited (Paradiso) V20:190–191 There is the one song everyone (Siren Song) V7:196 There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, (There Will Come Soft Rains) V14:301 There you are, in all your innocence, (Perfect Light) V19:187 There’s a Certain Slant of Light (There’s a Certain Slant of Light) V6:211 There’s no way out. (In the Suburbs) V14:201 These open years, the river (For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton) V17:86 These unprepossessing sunsets (Art Thou the Thing I Wanted) V25:2–3 They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair (The Bean Eaters) V2:16 They said, ‘‘Wait.’’ Well, I waited. (Alabama Centennial) V10:2
P o e t r y
They say a child with two mouths is no good. (Pantoun for Chinese Women) V29:241 they were just meant as covers (My Mother Pieced Quilts) V12:169 This girlchild was: born as usual (Barbie Doll) V9:33 This is a litany of lost things, (The Litany) V24:101–102 This is my letter to the World (This Is My Letter to the World) V4:233 This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, (The Arsenal at Springfield) V17:2 This is the black sea-brute bulling through wave-wrack (Leviathan) V5:203 This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, (The Chambered Nautilus) V24:52–53 This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level (Paradoxes and Oxymorons) V11:162 This tale is true, and mine. It tells (The Seafarer) V8:177 Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness (Ode on a Grecian Urn) V1:179 Three times my life has opened. (Three Times My Life Has Opened) V16:213 Time in school drags along with so much worry, (Childhood) V19:29 to fold the clothes. No matter who lives (I Stop Writimg the Poem) V16:58 To him who in the love of Nature holds (Thanatopsis) V30:232–233 To replay errors (Daughter-MotherMaya-Seeta) V25:83 To weep unbidden, to wake (Practice) V23:240 Toni Morrison despises (The Toni Morrison Dreams) V22:202–203 Tonight I can write the saddest lines (Tonight I Can Write) V11:187 tonite, thriller was (Beware: Do Not Read This Poem) V6:3 Truth be told, I do not want to forget (Native Guard) V29:183 Turning and turning in the widening gyre (The Second Coming) V7:179 ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves (Jabberwocky) V11:91 ’Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, (On Being Brought from Africa to America) V29:223 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood (The Road Not Taken) V2:195 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright (The Tyger) V2:263
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When he spoke of where he came from, (Grudnow) V32:73 When I consider how my light is spent ([On His Blindness] Sonnet 16) V3:262 When I go away from you (The Taxi) V30:211–212 When I have fears that I may cease to be (When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be) V2:295 When I heard the learn’d astronomer, (When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer) V22:244 When I see a couple of kids (High Windows) V3:108 When I see birches bend to left and right (Birches) V13:14 When I was born, you waited (Having it Out with Melancholy) V17:98 When I was one-and-twenty (When I Was One-and-Twenty) V4:268 When I watch you (Miss Rosie) V1:133 When the mountains of Puerto Rico (We Live by What We See at Night) V13:240 When the world was created wasn’t it like this? (Anniversary) V15:2 When they said Carrickfergus I could hear (The Singer’s House) V17:205 When we two parted (When We Two Parted) V29:297 When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold (The City Limits) V19:78 When you look through the window in Sag Harbor and see (View) V25:246–247 When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) V8:198 Whenever Richard Cory went down town (Richard Cory) V4:116 While I was gone a war began. (While I Was Gone a War Began) V21:253–254
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While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead (The RiverMerchant’s Wife: A Letter) V8:164 While the long grain is softening (Early in the Morning) V17:75 While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire (Shine, Perishing Republic) V4:161 While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth, (The Afterlife) V18:39 Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston? (In Memory of Radio) V9:144 Whose woods these are I think I know (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) V1:272 Whoso list to hunt: I know where is an hind. (Whoso List to Hunt) V25:286 Why should I let the toad work (Toads) V4:244
Y You are small and intense (To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly) V11:173 You can’t hear? Everything here is changing. (The River Mumma Wants Out) V25:191 You do not have to be good. (Wild Geese) V15:207 You should lie down now and remember the forest, (The Forest) V22:36–37 You stood thigh-deep in water and green light glanced (Lake) V23:158 You were never told, Mother, how old Illya was drunk (The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter) V12:44
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Cumulative Index of First Lines
wade (The Fish) V14:171 Wanting to say things, (My Father’s Song) V16:102 We are saying goodbye (Station) V21:226–227 We came from our own country in a red room (Originally) V25:146–147 We cannot know his legendary head (Archaic Torso of Apollo) V27:3 We could be here. This is the valley (Small Town with One Road) V7:207 We met the British in the dead of winter (Meeting the British) V7:138 We real cool. We (We Real Cool) V6:242 Well, son, I’ll tell you (Mother to Son) V3:178 What dire offense from amorous causes springs, (The Rape of the Lock) V12:202 What happens to a dream deferred? (Harlem) V1:63 What of the neighborhood homes awash (The Continuous Life) V18:51 What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache selfconscious looking at the full moon (A Supermarket in California) V5:261 Whatever it is, it must have (American Poetry) V7:2 When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads, and the assassin . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs (Cool Tombs) V6:45 When despair for the world grows in me (The Peace of Wild Things) V30:159
I n d e x
Cumulative Index of Last Lines A . . . a capital T in the endless mass of the text. (Answers to Letters) V21:30–31 a fleck of foam. (Accounting) V21:2–3 A heart that will one day beat you to death. (Monologue for an Onion) V24:120–121 A heart whose love is innocent! (She Walks in Beauty) V14:268 a man then suddenly stops running (Island of Three Marias) V11:80 A perfect evening! (Temple Bells Die Out) V18:210 a space in the lives of their friends (Beware: Do Not Read This Poem) V6:3 A sudden blow: the great wings beating still (Leda and the Swan) V13:181 A terrible beauty is born (Easter 1916) V5:91 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. (Thanatopsis) V30:232–233 About my big, new, automatically defrosting refrigerator with the built-in electric eye (Reactionary Essay on Applied Science) V9:199 about the tall mounds of termites. (Song of a Citizen) V16:126 Across the expedient and wicked stones (Auto Wreck) V3:31 affirming its brilliant and dizzying love. (Lepidopterology) V23:171
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? (A Supermarket in California) V5:261 All losses are restored and sorrows end (Sonnet 30) V4:192 Amen. Amen (The Creation) V1:20 Anasazi (Anasazi) V9:3 and a vase of wild flowers. (The War Correspondent) V26:239 and all beyond saving by children (Ethics) V8:88 and all the richer for it. (Mind) V17:146 And all we need of hell (My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close) V8:127 And, being heard, doesn’t vanish in the dark. (Variations on Nothing) V20:234 and changed, back to the class (‘‘Trouble with Math in a OneRoom Country School’’) V9:238 and chant him a blessing, a sutra. (What For) V33:267 And covered up—our names— (I Died for Beauty) V28:174 And dances with the daffodils. (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) V33:71 And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die (Holy Sonnet 10) V2:103
and destruction. (Allegory) V23:2–3 And drunk the milk of Paradise (Kubla Khan) V5:172 and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise. (The City Limits) V19:78 And Finished knowing—then— (I Felt a Funeral in My Brain) V13:137 And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies (Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio) V8:17 and go back. (For the White poets who would be Indian) V13:112 And handled with a Chain— (Much Madness is Divinest Sense) V16:86 And has not begun to grow a manly smile. (Deep Woods) V14:139 And his own Word (The Phoenix) V10:226 And I am Nicholas. (The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter) V12:45 And I let the fish go. (The Fish) V31:44 And I was unaware. (The Darkling Thrush) V18:74 And in the suburbs Can’t sat down and cried. (Kilroy) V14:213 And it’s been years. (Anniversary) V15:3 and joy may come, and make its test of us. (One Is One) V24:158 and leaving essence to the inner eye. (Memory) V21:156 And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair (Mother to Son) V3:179 And like a thunderbolt he falls (The Eagle) V11:30
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And makes me end where I begun (A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning) V11:202 And ‘midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name. (The Rape of the Lock) V12:209 And miles to go before I sleep (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) V1:272 and my father saying things. (My Father’s Song) V16:102 And no birds sing. (La Belle Dame sans Merci) V17:18 And not waving but drowning (Not Waving but Drowning) V3:216 And oh, ‘tis true, ‘tis true (When I Was One-and-Twenty) V4:268 And reach for your scalping knife. (For Jean Vincent D’abbadie, Baron St.-Castin) V12:78 and retreating, always retreating, behind it (Brazil, January 1, 1502) V6:16 And settled upon his eyes in a black soot (‘‘More Light! More Light!’’) V6:120 And shuts his eyes. (Darwin in 1881) V13: 84 And so live ever—or else swoon to death (Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art) V9:44 and strange and loud was the dingoes’ cry (Drought Year) V8:78 and stride out. (Courage) V14:126 and sweat and fat and greed. (Anorexic) V12:3 And that has made all the difference (The Road Not Taken) V2:195 And the deep river ran on (As I Walked Out One Evening) V4:16 And the midnight message of Paul Revere (Paul Revere’s Ride) V2:180 And the mome raths outgrabe (Jabberwocky) V11:91 And the Salvation Army singing God loves us . . . (Hopeis a Tattered Flag) V12:120 and these the last verses that I write for her (Tonight I Can Write) V11:187 and thickly wooded country; the moon. (The Art of the Novel) V23:29 And those roads in South Dakota that feel around in the darkness . . . (Come with Me) V6:31 and to know she will stay in the field till you die? (Landscape with Tractor) V10:183 and two blankets embroidered with smallpox (Meeting the British) V7:138
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and waving, shouting, Welcome back. (Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead) V14:154 And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! (If) V22:54–55 and whose skin is made dusky by stars. (September) V23:258–259 And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’ (Whoso List to Hunt) V25:286 And would suffice (Fire and Ice) V7:57 And yet God has not said a word! (Porphyria’s Lover) V15:151 and you spread un the thin halo of night mist. (Ways to Live) V16:229 And Zero at the Bone— (A Narrow Fellow in the Grass) V11:127 (answer with a tower of birds) (Duration) V18:93 Around us already perhaps future moons, suns and stars blaze in a fiery wreath. (But Perhaps God Needs the Longing) V20:41 aspired to become lighter than air (Blood Oranges) V13:34 As any She belied with false compare (Sonnet 130) V1:248 As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye. (On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three) V17:160 As far as Cho-fu-Sa (The RiverMerchant’s Wife: A Letter) V8:165 as it has disappeared. (The Wings) V28:244 As the contagion of those molten eyes (For An Assyrian Frieze) V9:120 As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and clothes, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes (The Bean Eaters) V2:16 as we crossed the field, I told her. (The Centaur) V30:20 As what he loves may never like too much. (On My First Son) V33:166 at home in the fish’s fallen heaven (Birch Canoe) V5:31 away, pedaling hard, rocket and pilot. (His Speed and Strength) V19:96
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality (Hurt Hawks) V3:138 before we’re even able to name them. (Station) V21:226–227 behind us and all our shining ambivalent love airborne there before us. (Our Side) V24:177 Black like me. (Dream Variations) V15:42 Bless me (Hunger in New York City) V4:79 bombs scandalizing the sanctity of night. (While I Was Gone a War Began) V21:253–254 But, baby, where are you?’’ (Ballad of Birmingham) V5:17 But be (Ars Poetica) V5:3 But for centuries we have longed for it. (Everything Is Plundered) V32:34 but it works every time (Siren Song) V7:196 but the truth is, it is, lost to us now. (The Forest) V22:36–37 But there is no joy in Mudville— mighty Casey has ‘‘Struck Out.’’ (Casey at the Bat) V5:58 But we hold our course, and the wind is with us. (On Freedom’s Ground) V12:187 by a beeswax candle pooling beside their dinnerware. (Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End) V24:214–215 by good fortune (The Horizons of Rooms) V15:80
C Calls through the valleys of Hall. (Song of the Chattahoochee) V14:284 chickens (The Red Wheelbarrow) V1:219 clear water dashes (Onomatopoeia) V6:133 Columbia. (Kindness) V24:84–85 come to life and burn? (Bidwell Ghost) V14:2 Comin’ for to carry me home (Swing Low Sweet Chariot) V1:284 cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink. (The Man-Moth) V27:135 crossed the water. (All It Takes) V23:15
B
D
Back to the play of constant give and change (The Missing) V9:158 Beautiful & dangerous. (Slam, Dunk, & Hook) V30:176–177
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (The Tyger) V2:263 ‘‘Dead,’’ was all he answered (The Death of the Hired Man) V4:44
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E endless worlds is the great meeting of children. (60) V18:3 Eternal, unchanging creator of earth. Amen (The Seafarer) V8:178 Eternity of your arms around my neck. (Death Sentences) V22:23 even as it vanishes—were not our life. (The Litany) V24:101–102 ever finds anything more of immortality. (Jade Flower Palace) V32:145 every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow. (The Afterlife) V18:39
F fall upon us, the dwellers in shadow (In the Land of Shinar) V7:84 Fallen cold and dead (O Captain! My Captain!) V2:147 filled, never. (The Greatest Grandeur) V18:119 Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays (Cargoes) V5:44 Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? (Ode to a Nightingale) V3:229 For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.’’ (Lord Randal) V6:105 For nothing now can ever come to any good. (Funeral Blues) V10:139
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For the love of God they buried his cold corpse. (The Bronze Horseman) V28:31 forget me as fast as you can. (Last Request) V14:231 from one kiss (A Rebirth) V21:193–194
G garish for a while and burned. (One of the Smallest) V26:142 going where? Where? (Childhood) V19:29
H Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard (The Unknown Citizen) V3:303 Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on (Mus,e des Beaux Arts) V1:148 half eaten by the moon. (Dear Reader) V10:85 hand over hungry hand. (Climbing) V14:113 Happen on a red tongue (Small Town with One Road) V7:207 hard as mine with another man? (An Attempt at Jealousy) V29:24 Has no more need of, and I have (The Courage that My Mother Had) V3:80 Has set me softly down beside you. The Poem is you (Paradoxes and Oxymorons) V11:162 Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! (The Destruction of Sennacherib) V1:39 He rose the morrow morn (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) V4:132 He says again, ‘‘Good fences make good neighbors.’’ (Mending Wall) V5:232 He writes down something that he crosses out. (The Boy) V19:14 here; passion will save you. (Air for Mercury) V20:2–3 History theirs whose languages is the sun. (An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum) V23:88–89 How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm (The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower) V8:101 How can I turn from Africa and live? (A Far Cry from Africa) V6:61 How sad then is even the marvelous! (An Africian Elegy) V13:4
I I am a true Russian! (Babii Yar) V29:38
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I am black. (The Song of the Smoke) V13:197 I am going to keep things like this (Hawk Roosting) V4:55 I am not brave at all (Strong Men, Riding Horses) V4:209 I could not see to see— (I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—) V5:140 I cremated Sam McGee (The Cremation of Sam McGee) V10:76 I didn’t want to put them down. (And What If I Spoke of Despair) V19:2 I have just come down from my father (The Hospital Window) V11:58 I hear it in the deep heart’s core. (The Lake Isle of Innisfree) V15:121 I know why the caged bird sings! (Sympathy) V33:203 I never writ, nor no man ever loved (Sonnet 116) V3:288 I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (The Peace of Wild Things) V30:159 I romp with joy in the bookish dark (Eating Poetry) V9:61 I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES (Why I Am Not a Painter) V8:259 I shall but love thee better after death (Sonnet 43) V2:236 I should be glad of another death (Journey of the Magi) V7:110 I stand up (Miss Rosie) V1:133 I stood there, fifteen (Fifteen) V2:78 I take it you are he? (Incident in a Rose Garden) V14:191 I, too, am America. (I, Too) V30:99 I turned aside and bowed my head and wept (The Tropics in New York) V4:255 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (Ode to the West Wind) V2:163 I’ll be gone from here. (The Cobweb) V17:51 I’ll dig with it (Digging) V5:71 In a convulsive misery (The Milkfish Gatherers) V11:112 In balance with this life, this death (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death) V1:76 in earth’s gasp, ocean’s yawn. (Lake) V23:158 In Flanders fields (In Flanders Fields) V5:155 In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. (The Idea of Order at Key West) V13:164
Cumulative Index of Last Lines
deep in the deepest one, tributaries burn. (For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton) V17:86 Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate— now! (The Base Stealer) V12:30 Die soon (We Real Cool) V6:242 Do what you are going to do, I will tell about it. (I go Back to May 1937) V17:113 down from the sky (Russian Letter) V26:181 Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past (Piano) V6:145 Downward to darkness, on extended wings. (Sunday Morning) V16:190 Driving around, I will waste more time. (Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter) V17:63 dry wells that fill so easily now (The Exhibit) V9:107 dust rises in many myriads of grains. (Not like a Cypress) V24:135 dusty as miners, into the restored volumes. (Bonnard’s Garden) V25:33
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In hearts at peace, under an English heaven (The Soldier) V7:218 In her tomb by the side of the sea (Annabel Lee) V9:14 in the family of things. (Wild Geese) V15:208 in the grit gray light of day. (Daylights) V13:102 In the rear-view mirrors of the passing cars (The War Against the Trees) V11:216 In these Chicago avenues. (A Thirst Against) V20:205 in this bastion of culture. (To an Unknown Poet) V18:221 in your unsteady, opening hand. (What the Poets Could Have Been) V26:262 iness (l(a) V1:85 Into blossom (A Blessing) V7:24 Is Come, my love is come to me. (A Birthday) V10:34 is love—that’s all. (Two Poems for T.) V20:218 is safe is what you said. (Practice) V23:240 is still warm (Lament for the Dorsets) V5:191 It asked a crumb—of Me (‘‘Hope’’ Is the Thing with Feathers) V3:123 It had no mirrors. I no longer needed mirrors. (I, I, I) V26:97 It is our god. (Fiddler Crab) V23:111–112 it is the bell to awaken God that we’ve heard ringing. (The Garden Shukkei-en) V18:107 it over my face and mouth. (An Anthem) V26:34 It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave. (The Country Without a Post Office) V18:64 It was your resting place.’’ (Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?) V4:2 it’s always ourselves we find in the sea (maggie & milly & molly & may) V12:150 its bright, unequivocal eye. (Having it Out with Melancholy) V17:99 It’s the fall through wind lifting white leaves. (Rapture) V21:181 its youth. The sea grows old in it. (The Fish) V14:172
J Judge tenderly—of Me (This Is My Letter to the World) V4:233 Just imagine it (Inventors) V7:97
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L Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation (Chicago) V3:61 Learn to labor and to wait (A Psalm of Life) V7:165 Leashed in my throat (Midnight) V2:131 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s un-resting sea (The Chambered Nautilus) V24:52–53 Let my people go (Go Down, Moses) V11:43 Let the water come. (America, America) V29:4 life, our life and its forgetting. (For a New Citizen of These United States) V15:55 Life to Victory (Always) V24:15 like a bird in the sky . . . (EgoTripping) V28:113 like a shadow or a friend. Colombia. (Kindness) V24:84–85 Like Stone— (The Soul Selects Her Own Society) V1:259 Little Lamb, God bless thee. (The Lamb) V12:135 Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. (When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer) V22:244 love (The Toni Morrison Dreams) V22:202–203 Loved I not Honour more. (To Lucasta, Going to the Wars) V32:291 Luck was rid of its clover. (Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance) V27:292
M ‘Make a wish, Tom, make a wish.’ (Drifters) V10: 98 make it seem to change (The Moon Glows the Same) V7:152 May be refined, and join the angelic train. (On Being Brought from Africa to America) V29:223 may your mercy be near. (Two Eclipses) V33:221 midnight-oiled in the metric laws? (A Farewell to English) V10:126 Monkey business (Business) V16:2 More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! (Tintern Abbey) V2:250
P o e t r y
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree. (A Poison Tree) V24:195–196 My love shall in my verse ever live young (Sonnet 19) V9:211 My soul has grown deep like the rivers. (The Negro Speaks of Rivers) V10:198 My soul I’ll pour into thee. (The Night Piece: To Julia) V29:206
N never to waken in that world again (Starlight) V8:213 newness comes into the world (Daughter-Mother-MayaSeeta) V25:83 Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten. (Spring-Watching Pavilion) V18:198 No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair (Facing It) V5:110 no—tell them no— (The Hiding Place) V10:153 Noble six hundred! (The Charge of the Light Brigade) V1:3 nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands (somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond) V19:265 Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships. (The Drunken Boat) V28:84 Not a roof but a field of stars. (Rent) V25:164 not be seeing you, for you have no insurance. (The River Mumma Wants Out) V25:191 Not even the blisters. Look. (What Belongs to Us) V15:196 Not of itself, but thee. (Song: To Celia) V23:270–271 Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless (High Windows) V3:108 Nothing gold can stay (Nothing Gold Can Stay) V3:203 Now! (Alabama Centennial) V10:2 nursing the tough skin of figs (This Life) V1:293
O O Death in Life, the days that are no more! (Tears, Idle Tears) V4:220 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8) V9:182 O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost (Names of Horses) V8:142
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Or pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued. (A Nocturnal Reverie) V30:119–120 or the one red leaf the snow releases in March. (ThreeTimes My Life Has Opened) V16:213 ORANGE forever. (Ballad of Orange and Grape) V10:18 our every corpuscle become an elf. (Moreover, the Moon) V20:153 Our love shall live, and later life renew.’’ (Sonnet 75) V32:215 outside. (it was New York and beautifully, snowing . . . (i was sitting in mcsorley’s) V13:152 owing old (old age sticks) V3:246
P patient in mind remembers the time. (Fading Light) V21:49 Penelope, who really cried. (An Ancient Gesture) V31:3 Perhaps he will fall. (Wilderness Gothic) V12:242 Petals on a wet, black bough (In a Station of the Metro) V2:116 Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair (The Highwayman) V4:68 Powerless, I drown. (Maternity) V21:142–143 Pra´ise him. (Pied Beauty) V26:161 Pro patria mori. (Dulce et Decorum Est) V10:110
R Rage, rage against the dying of the light (Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night) V1:51 Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear. (The Singer’s House) V17:206 Remember. (Remember) V32:185 Remember the Giver fading off the lip (A Drink of Water) V8:66 Ride me. (Witness) V26:285 rise & walk away like a panther. (Ode to a Drum) V20:172–173 Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish (Mirror) V1:116
S Shall be lifted—nevermore! (The Raven) V1:202 Shantih shantih shantih (The Waste Land) V20:248–252 share my shivering bed. (Chorale) V25:51
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she’d miss me. (In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers) V32:129 Show an affirming flame. (September 1, 1939) V27:235 Shuddering with rain, coming down around me. (Omen) V22:107 Simply melted into the perfect light. (Perfect Light) V19:187 Singing of him what they could understand (Beowulf) V11:3 Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs (I Hear America Singing) V3:152 Sister, one of those who never married. (My Grandmother’s Plot in the Family Cemetery) V27:155 Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies! (Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´ as) V31:128–30 slides by on grease (For the Union Dead) V7:67 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (The Second Coming) V7:179 so like the smaller stars we rowed among. (The Lotus Flowers) V33:108 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee (Sonnet 18) V2:222 So prick my skin. (Pine) V23:223–224 Somebody loves us all. (Filling Station) V12:57 Speak through my words and my blood. (The Heights of Macchu Picchu) V28:141 spill darker kissmarks on that dark. (Ten Years after Your Deliberate Drowning) V21:240 Stand still, yet we will make him run (To His Coy Mistress) V5:277 startled into eternity (Four Mountain Wolves) V9:132 Still clinging to your shirt (My Papa’s Waltz) V3:192 Stood up, coiled above his head, transforming all. (A Tall Man Executes a Jig) V12:229 strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate. (Originally) V25:146–147 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (Psalm 23) V4:103 syllables of an old order. (A Grafted Tongue) V12:93
Cumulative Index of Last Lines
o, walk your body down, don’t let it go it alone. (Walk Your Body Down) V26:219 Of all our joys, this must be the deepest. (Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon) V20:59–60 of blood and ignorance. (Art Thou the Thing I Wanted) V25:2–3 of gentleness (To a Sad Daughter) V8:231 of love’s austere and lonely offices? (Those Winter Sundays) V1:300 of peaches (The Weight of Sweetness) V11:230 Of the camellia (Falling Upon Earth) V2:64 Of the Creator. And he waits for the world to begin (Leviathan) V5:204 of our festivities (Fragment 2) V31:63 Of what is past, or passing, or to come (Sailing to Byzantium) V2:207 Oh that was the garden of abundance, seeing you. (Seeing You) V24:244–245 Old Ryan, not yours (The Constellation Orion) V8:53 On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November. (Classic Ballroom Dances) V33:3 On the dark distant flurry (Angle of Geese) V2:2 on the frosty autumn air. (The Cossacks) V25:70 On the look of Death— (There’s a Certain Slant of Light) V6:212 On the reef of Norman’s Woe! (The Wreck of the Hesperus) V31:317 On your head like a crown (Any Human to Another) V3:2 One could do worse that be a swinger of birches. (Birches) V13:15 ‘‘Only the Lonely,’’ trying his best to sound like Elvis. (The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives) V28:274 or a loose seed. (Freeway 280) V30:62 Or does it explode? (Harlem) V1:63 Or help to half-a-crown.’’ (The Man He Killed) V3:167 Or just some human sleep. (After Apple Picking) V32:3 or last time, we look. (In Particular) V20:125 or last time, we look. (In Particular) V20:125 Or might not have lain dormant forever. (Mastectomy) V26:123 or nothing (Queen-Ann’s-Lace) V6:179
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T Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any get more than the lovers . . . in the dust . . . in the cool tombs (Cool Tombs) V6:46 Than from everything else life promised that you could do? (Paradiso) V20:190–191 Than that you should remember and be sad. (Remember) V14:255 that does not see you. You must change your life. (Archaic Torso of Apollo) V27:3 that might have been sweet in Grudnow. (Grudnow) V32:74 That then I scorn to change my state with Kings (Sonnet 29) V8:198 that there is more to know, that one day you will know it. (Knowledge) V25:113 That when we live no more, we may live ever (To My Dear and Loving Husband) V6:228 That’s the word. (Black Zodiac) V10:47 the bigger it gets. (Smart and Final Iris) V15:183 The bosom of his Father and his God (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) V9:74 the bow toward torrents of veyz mir. (Three To’s and an Oi) V24:264 The crime was in Granada, his Granada. (The Crime Was in Granada) V23:55–56 The dance is sure (Overture to a Dance of Locomotives) V11:143 The eyes turn topaz. (Hugh Selwyn Mauberley) V16:30 the flames? (Another Night in the Ruins) V26:13 The garland briefer than a girl’s (To an Athlete Dying Young) V7:230 The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills. (On the Grasshopper and the Cricket) V32:161 The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind. (Cavalry Crossing a Ford) V13:50 The hands gripped hard on the desert (At the Bomb Testing Site) V8:3 The holy melodies of love arise. (The Arsenal at Springfield) V17:3 the knife at the throat, the death in the metronome (Music Lessons) V8:117 The Lady of Shalott.’’ (The Lady of Shalott) V15:97
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The lightning and the gale! (Old Ironsides) V9:172 The lone and level sands stretch far away. (Ozymandias) V27:173 the long, perfect loveliness of sow (Saint Francis and the Sow) V9:222 The Lord survives the rainbow of His will (The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket) V6:159 The man I was when I was part of it (Beware of Ruins) V8:43 the quilts sing on (My Mother Pieced Quilts) V12:169 The red rose and the brier (Barbara Allan) V7:11 The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. (The Rhodora) V17:191 The shaft we raise to them and thee (Concord Hymn) V4:30 the skin of another, what I have made is a curse. (Curse) V26:75 The sky became a still and woven blue. (Merlin Enthralled) V16:73 The spirit of this place (To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly) V11:173 The town again, trailing your legs and crying! (Wild Swans) V17:221 the unremitting space of your rebellion (Lost Sister) V5:217 The woman won (Oysters) V4:91 The world should listen then—as I am listening now. (To a SkyLark) V32:252 their dinnerware. (Portrait of a Couple at Century’s End) V24:214–215 their guts or their brains? (Southbound on the Freeway) V16:158 Then chiefly lives. (Virtue) V25:263 There are blows in life, so hard . . . I just don’t know! (The Black Heralds) V26:47 There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught— they say— God, when he walked on earth (Shine, Perishing Republic) V4:162 there was light (Vancouver Lights) V8:246 They also serve who only stand and wait.’’ ([On His Blindness] Sonnet 16) V3:262 They are going to some point true and unproven. (Geometry) V15:68
P o e t r y
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit. (A Black Man Talks of Reaping) V32:21 They rise, they walk again (The Heaven of Animals) V6:76 They say a child with two mouths is no good. (Pantoun for Chinese Women) V29:242 They think I lost. I think I won (Harlem Hopscotch) V2:93 They’d eaten every one.’’ (The Walrus and the Carpenter) V30:258–259 This is my page for English B (Theme for English B) V6:194 This Love (In Memory of Radio) V9:145 Tho’ it were ten thousand mile! (A Red, Red Rose) V8:152 Though I sang in my chains like the sea (Fern Hill) V3:92 Till human voices wake us, and we drown (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) V1:99 Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink (When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be) V2:295 Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. (A Noiseless Patient Spider) V31:190–91 To every woman a happy ending (Barbie Doll) V9:33 to glow at midnight. (The Blue Rim of Memory) V17:39 to its owner or what horror has befallen the other shoe (A Pie´d) V3:16 To live with thee and be thy love. (The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd) V14:241 To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume. (‘‘Blighters’’) V28:3 To strengthen whilst one stands.’’ (Goblin Market) V27:96 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield (Ulysses) V2:279 To the moaning and the groaning of the bells (The Bells) V3:47 To the temple, singing. (In the Suburbs) V14:201 To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night? (The Taxi) V30:211–212 Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung. (A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General) V27:216
U Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond. (The Continuous Life) V18:51
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until at last I lift you up and wrap you within me. (It’s like This) V23:138–139 Until Eternity. (The Bustle in a House) V10:62 unusual conservation (Chocolates) V11:17 Uttering cries that are almost human (American Poetry) V7:2
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His Excellency General Washington) V13:213 with my eyes closed. (We Live by What We See at Night) V13:240 With silence and tears. (When We Two Parted) V29:297 with the door closed. (Hanging Fire) V32:93 With the slow smokeless burning of decay (The Wood-Pile) V6:252 With what they had to go on. (The Conquerors) V13:67 Without cease or doubt sew the sweet sad earth. (The Satyr’s Heart) V22:187 Would scarcely know that we were gone. (There Will Come Soft Rains) V14:301
Y Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (Ode on a Grecian Urn) V1:180 You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes (Sonnet 55) V5:246 You may for ever tarry. (To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time) V13:226 you who raised me? (The Gold Lily) V5:127 You’re all that I can call my own. (Woman Work) V33:289 you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. (Ithaka) V19:114
Cumulative Index of Last Lines
War is kind (War Is Kind) V9:253 watching to see how it’s done. (I Stop Writing the Poem) V16:58 water. (Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted) V29:262 We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?’’ (Losses) V31:167–68 we tread upon, forgetting. Truth be told. (Native Guard) V29:185 Went home and put a bullet through his head (Richard Cory) V4:117 Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. (Out, Out—) V10:213 Were toward Eternity— (Because I Could Not Stop for Death) V2:27 What will survive of us is love. (An Arundel Tomb) V12:18 When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose (The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner) V2:41 when they untie them in the evening. (Early in the Morning) V17:75 when you are at a party. (Social Life) V19:251 When you have both (Toads) V4:244
Where deep in the night I hear a voice (Butcher Shop) V7:43 Where ignorant armies clash by night (Dover Beach) V2:52 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! (My Last Duchess) V1:166 Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen. (The God Who Loves You) V20:88 which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it (Having a Coke with You) V12:106 which only looks like an l, and is silent. (Trompe l’Oeil) V22:216 white ash amid funereal cypresses (Helen) V6:92 Who are you and what is your purpose? (The Mystery) V15:138 Why am I not as they? (Lineage) V31:145–46 Wi’ the Scots lords at his feit (Sir Patrick Spens) V4:177 Will always be ready to bless the day (Morning Walk) V21:167 will be easy, my rancor less bitter . . . (On the Threshold) V22:128 Will hear of as a god.’’ (How we Heard the Name) V10:167 Wind, like the dodo’s (Bedtime Story) V8:33 windowpanes. (View) V25:246–247 With courage to endure! (Old Stoic) V33:144 With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine. (To
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