“Pyro” by Dana Levin
Contributors
by Lillian Baker Kennedy
Introduction
In all the adult years I lived without poetry, I never lived without acopy of Four Quartets. In “the wave cry, the windcry,” the “petrel and the porpoise,” I knewthe sea of these objects, not as things but as living things (Eliot,“East Coker,” Four Quartets, L 208-09.)1Eliot’s rhythm and abstractions echo for me the experiences ofmy own life, raised on Ecclesiastes, studying philosophy andalways, living near the cadence of the sea. The feeling of FourQuartets was familiar to me. Imagine my reaction when I read RobertBly complaining about the loss of spirit or inwardness in poetry(“A Wrong Turning”) and identifying, among others, T.S. Eliotas the culprit.2 I have had a long relationship with thesepoems, long enough to disagree.
After I enrolled in Stonecoast, I began to pay more attentionto discussions about poetics. I turned, once again, to my trustedFour Quartets, for guidance, but even after Eliot made an effortto use all his considerable powers, poetry continued to change anddevelop. I became interested in the debate that seemed to swirl aroundnarrative lyricists and the so-called “L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E”poets, the same that Marjorie Perloff calls “21st CenturyModernists”(2lst Century Modernism.) Declaring that earlymodernism “provided the seeds of the materialist poetic. . .moreattuned. . .(to 21st Century Modernist poetics — LBK). .. than tothe authenticity model — the ‘true voice of feeling’,” Perloffcites Eliot with approval for the following: “for my meaning is,that the poet has, not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particularmedium, which is only a medium.”(3, 4 and 9). How could Ireconcile the Eliot I knew through feeling his poetry and the Eliotaccurately quoted for principles of materialism? Is there anirreconcilable dualism in poetry between “the true voice offeeling” and materialism, and what would the implications of thisdualism be for an American poet?
In 1932 in the Norton lectures, T. S. Eliot asked, “Whatis poetry?”(The Use of Poetry 6). In the same series oflectures, Eliot proposed to also ask what is “a goodpoem?”(6). I once had a philosophy professor who said, “Youdidn’t have the wrong answer. You asked the wrong question!” Irespectfully submit the great Eliot asked the wrong question, but I donot accuse him of soulnessness. English simply afforded him nointerrogative pronoun. “Who” is reserved for humans.“What” is reserved for objects. This suggests to me theEnglish language has an inbred alienation of the internal from theexternal world. Alienation is not unknown in the context of (especiallyAmerican) materialism. I was intrigued to read Robert Hass’s notionthat kigo or seasonal phrases in haiku are similar to shamanicsongs “intended at one time to call forth the living spiritsmanifested in those natural phenomena”(314-315). It seemed to methat all poets might bear in mind the potentiality of a liverelationship between words and objects or things. Eliot did. Heexpressed that relationship in the phrase “objective correlative,” (The Sacred Wood 58) a phrase which Dobyns suggests arisesout of the context of the properties of “sympatheticmagic”(296).
Eliot’s initial coinage of the (perhaps unfortunate) phrase“objective correlative” is published in his essay on Hamlet inThe Sacred Wood (58). Note the word “sacred.” Eliotwas complaining about lack of adequate evidence to justify Hamlet’shatred of Gertrude. Now, scholars may disagree with Eliot aboutShakespeare, but his point about “objective correlative” (whenproperly understood) retains viability.
- The only way ofexpressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objectivecorrelative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain ofevents which shall be the formula of that particular (emphasis inoriginal) emotion; such that when the external facts, which mustterminate in sensory experience, (emphasis added) are given, the emotionis immediately evoked.” (58)
Later, in the same essay,Eliot writes about “exact equivalence,” but this is not a drymathematical equivalence. The job of the artist is to “intensifythe world to his emotions” not to subdue the feeling (59).
Olson (a forbear of the 21st Century modernists) defined“Objectism” as the “getting rid of the lyricalinterference of the individual as ego, of the ‘subject’ and hissoul.” (Bly “A Wrong Turning” 21). One can see howEliot’s cold term, “objective correlative,” could, at first,be perceived by Bly as the deadening pivot in poetry (18). In myjudgment, however, based on my reading of Eliot’s poetry as much as histheory, “objectism” as thus defined critically misperceivesEliot’s exhortation to “depersonalize.” In “Traditionand the Individual Talent” Eliot says poetry is not
- ’emotion recollected in tranquillity’. . .For it is neither emotion, norrecollection nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It isconcentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration.. .which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. . .the badpoet is usually unconscious where he should be conscious, and consciouswhere he ought to be unconscious. (emphasis added, 33)
Ultimately, however, the “significant emotion”(emphasisin original) “has its life in the poem and not in thehistory of the poet. (emphasis added) 33.
Archibald MacLeish, an imagist wrote, in “Ars Poetica,”
A poem should not mean
But be.
So often, any use of the word “thing” or “objective”seems to get us off track in discussions of poetics. It might behelpful to remember that Eliot wrote both his essays and his poetryfollowing the Romantics. In addition, he was close to Ezra Pound, anadvocate of Imagist principles, the “natural object” as“adequate symbol” (Perloff, “PoundAscendant”). The idea is not to re-enact but to create. There isan enormous difference. Williams, another culprit identified by Bly(“A Wrong Turning” 20) is famous for “No ideas but inthings,” a phrase taken out of the context of a William CarlosWilliams poem.
A Sort of Song
by William CarlosWilliams
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and thewriting
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet towait,
sleepless.
—through metaphor to reconcile
thepeople and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things)Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
Saxifrage is a beautiful little perennial that grows on the tundra.Williams is the same poet who reported that his first poem came“like a bolt out of the blue.” (Perloff Dance of theIntellect 91). The word he uses between “people” and“stones” is “reconcile.” Williams is a particularlyinteresting poet to be quoted so often for “things.” He isoften cited by proponents of 21st Century Modernist poetry, but I seehim as a straddler like myself. He is rightfully cited as a poet who hadsome sense of the materiality of the text.
As I continued tostudy and mull over this gap between the narrative lyricists and the21st Century Modernists, I often wondered what Eliot would think, wherehe might have taken his poetry if he had these newer ideas, what hemight try to leave out and what he would consider essential to retain.Joan Houlihan, a critic/reviewer, had the following to say about threeof the so-called L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry books:
- In all three books discussed here, the typographical cleverness(one-word lines, word endings fraught with a too-obvious double/triplemeaning), the jolting imagery and the self-conscious jokiness fail tocompensate for the lack of an authentic attempt to reach for, andconnect to, an emotional center, a universal and human matter, andthat—emotional revelation in all its complexity—is what’s sodreadfully absent in all these collections. This absence is why thereader is not only prevented by lack of craft from proceeding from oneline to the next, from one poem to the next, but also why there is noincentive to do so. These poets write as a sky writer does—instartling loop-de-loops of language that disappear before the reader’seyes, leaving only blank sky. Having taken no risk to reach their owndepths of feeling, having taken no time to revise and improve their worksuch that there is a sense of inevitable order, these poets have chosento disrespect the reader. The reader should return the lack of respectand refuse them his or her precious time and attention. Maybe if weignore them, they will go away.
Ira Sadoff, in a recentAmerican Poetry Review article, provides a more moderatereflection on 21st Century Modernist poetry. Sadoff notes his feeling,developing over time, that the narrative lyric is “too facile”(49). Specifically citing a well-loved Stafford poem, “Traveling inthe Dark,” Sadoff made the argument that such“representational” poems’ “strategies” i.e.experience/epiphany, are so predictable, they are, for him, lesspleasurable and also, interestingly, perhaps less representational, infact, of our times. (49-50). After studying craft for two years, I hadthe same feeling, but I have little interest in poetry as a“thing” except, perhaps, as a “thing-in-itself,” akind of “Thou.”
Eliot asked, “What is poetry?” My first visualized model ofpoetry was as plain as a household window screen. I could see the wiregrid and the spaces in between. It seemed to me that the“life” of a poem took place in between the wires on thatscreen, as if the wires were conductors, but the sparks ignited in thespaces. Now, I see that grid as more multi-dimensional like stringtheory, perhaps.3
The remainder of this essay will examine dimensions where poems quicken— the “objective correlative” in Neruda’s “Solo LaMuerte,” tone and syntax in Lewis Carroll’s“Jabberwocky,” signage and rhythm in William Carlos Williams’“The Attic Which is Desire,” the auditory, pictorial andsyntactic dash down Dana Levin’s “Pyro.” Finally, EmilyDickinson, who is so wonderfully independent she partakes of naturalobjects and presages modernistic visuals, throws “a certain slantof light” on the mystery of a major, living poem.
Only Death5
Thistitle is difficult to translate because the very essence of the poem isthe balance between Death as “nothing” in the sense that it’spart of the endless cycle, and Death as the great destroyer. OurEnglish tends to list toward diminishment when “only” is usedwith a noun out of context. But, if one translates “the one andonly, ” the metaphor Neruda gets in the title becomes unbalanced tothe other extreme. We can’t quite effectively maintain the necessarybalance in translation.
There are lone cemeteries, tombs filled with soundless bones,
We are immediately delivered to a cemetery and to“lone,” one, lonely, alone. Neruda begins with the literal andnotes absence (as Hirsch noted in his discussion) the“filling” up of the soundless with the filling up of“bones” and with the “soundless”death in the bonewhich can be both literal (still, incapable of movement) and figurativee.g. “I feel it deep in my bones.”
“Cemeteries” is reinforced by “tombs” the specificsite, but also a wider sign, pointing even, perhaps, to Biblical“tombs” such as the ones Lazarus and Christ reportedly left.
the heart passes through a tunnel
Tunnel here isambiguous and evocative of a confined, dark space, a “passage”and also signals the verb “tunneling”, a focusing in ofvision, which is entirely consistent with fear and grief (closing in).
dark, dark, dark,
I am fascinated by the fact thatboth Eliot and Neruda use exactly the same expression (given reasonabletranslation). “O dark dark dark. They all go into thedark,” (“East Coker” L 101).
Eliot was knownto advocate stealing (Eliot, “Philip Massinger,” The SacredWood 72), but I respectfully submit such stealing is not thievery.It’s more like active listening, like the echo of empathy where the poetpermits his poem to say to other poems, “I’ve heard you.” Andif the identical or nearly identical should arise in poems from twodifferent hemispheres or eras, who’s to say that such synchronicity isnot a natural effect of a living language?
(See Jung, “I am assuming that the work of art we propose toanalyse, as well as being symbolic, has its source not in thepersonal unconscious of the poet, but in a sphere of unconsciousmythology whose primordial images are. . .the collectiveunconscious.”(emphasis in original, 80). See also, generally,Pinker.
like ashipwreck sinks deep in our dying,
classic simile—concrete/abstraction
like drowning in the heart,
feeling and corporeal
like we go on falling in fromthe skin into the soul.
physical andfeeling/physical/abstract
Think also how graves collapse, thecollapse of grief, the decomposition of flesh to the soil. . .literally
There are corpses,
and here they are if you haven’t already thought of them
there are feet of cool, cloying stone,
like headstones, like the clammy feeling of anxiety/dread
there is death in the bones
abstraction/literal but again, a common metaphor — “Ifeel it in my bones.”
like a pure sound,
completely untethered, the sound without meaning, primal—the absence of any relationship with object in the external world.
like a bark without a dog,
This is not simply absence. Who has not heard of dogs howling atdeath? Neruda gets maximum association from his correlatives. They areoften multidirectional.
rising from certain bells,certain tombs,
What’s rising? The dead? We hear it in the ringing bellannouncing the funeral? For whom the bell tolls? The grammaticalreferent is “pure sound” — menacing because it iscompletely disconnected.
swelling in the humidity like alament or like the rain.
And it’s getting bigger, but notethe shift in metaphor, here.
Now, we have
death and humidity
swelling
like a lament
—abstraction/feeling
death after it swells up from the humidity)
like the rain
abstraction/object
I see, alone, attimes,
coffins under sail
What was dead and buried is nowaloft. Note the “I” is alone as the cemetery was alone, butas soon as this “I” enters the poem, the material starts todefy the laws of matter, rising, the direct opposite direction of rain.
lifting anchor with the pale dead, with women in their deadbraids,
This particular image is one of my favorites foritself, but also because it seems to me to partake heavily in very basicsymbolism. Those braids/anchor/chain connections often come to me asassociations with other subjects e.g. the double helix of DNA. The“vision” of a poet like Neruda, with the courage to write itdown, has the potential to participate in very basic structures.
with bakers white as angels,
not “angels”which would flatten the poem, still tethered to ground through“as” and this wonderful combination of the essential element(flour) of the bread of life with those who are already passed on i.e.angels.
with pensive girls married to notaries,
anddoes this poem not call out to Eliot’s?
“The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
Thegenerous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguishedcivil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords andpetty contractors, all go into the dark,”
(“EastCoker,” L 103-06.)
coffins ascending the verticalriver of the dead,
What was horizontal is nowvertical. River is a standard symbol, well used in myth. It partakesof many associations, Lethe, spirit, transformation. The poet is using“river” both with its myth and its roots in the natural world.He also uses the logic of dreams.
the violet-colored river,headed upward, sails swollen with the sound of death,
thevery absence, the thing feared, the disconnected sound transfigured tobreath, the energy that moves the boats. . .and it is this willingness towork with the logic of dreams that assists in the transfiguration whilethe object, i.e. “sails” continues to ground the poem
swollen with the sound of the silence of death.
Death is drawn to sound
not just what butwhy. . .this is the stanza that begins the taming of the beastbecause it changes perspective from what is it, what does it want, towhy. . .and this is a second turn in the poem. . .from simile, loadedassociative words, metaphor through a transitional dream state ,rebuilding again on the simile/metaphor. . .
like ashoe without a foot, like a suit without aman (emphasis in all lines added)
thing/thing/thing/ but all associated with human
led to knock with a ring without stone, withoutfinger,
knock (human act) thing/thing thing-human andrepetition “without”, lacking. . .now we ask who? Deathis lacking.
led to shout without mouth, withouttongue, without throat.
shout (human act)thing/thing/thing/(but human body parts) repetition from aboveand an escalation from material to human part almost like aFrankenstein reconstruction but without the horror. This comparisonevokes empathy for death.
Nevertheless, its passing canbe heard
human (death) heard by human
and its dress rustlessoftly like a tree.
thing/sound/nature — ground
I don’t know, Iunderstand so little, I can hardly see
Now, when you look at all the power in the craft, thetransitions, the breadth of this poem, I ask, “what or who is thisvoice?” The entire poem to this point, with one line exception“I see, alone, at times” was written in the third person.Maybe Neruda was manipulating the reader, posturing what thismanufactured “I” confesses. I will grant the possibility, butI prefer to read this line as what I call the “break in theveil”. If a poem is, as I believe, a joint venture, the poet andthe living language, this is the poet confessing his limitations. Thisline reminds me very much of Bishop’s “Write it!” in “OneArt.” It is an interruption, a disclosure of the very act of therelationship of writing.
but I believe that its songholds the color of damp violets,
And one might argue that again Neruda manipulates us to join himby using “I,” but I choose to believe he believes.
of violets accustomed to the earth,
because the face of death isgreen,
and the gaze of death is green,
with the penetratingdampness of a violet leaf
and its grave color of exasperated winter.
This stanza takes us from song to color to plant to plant’srelationship with earth to the look of death and its kinship with thecolor of what lives in the penetrating damp in the feeling ofpenetrating damp, that “cloying cool” has blossomed back to“grave” and “exasperated winter.” Notice howswiftly the poet moves in these lines from the green violet through thedampness to winter. He flies through the seasons as he brings death,which he humanized, down to the grave through the plant metaphor.
But death also goes round the earth dressed as a broom,
use of the object “broom” completely domesticates andnot intellectually but emotionally— as natural as whatever else wemight find in the kitchen, safe, nurtured in the heart and hearth of thehome.
licking the ground looking for corpses,
death is in thebroom,
it’s the tongue of death searching for the dead,
it’s theneedle of death searching for the thread.
Death is in the cots:
in the slow mattresses, in the black blankets
and just when we get down to “sleeping” (almost acliché of death but unstated. Neruda has the knack of using eventhese well-known unstated metaphors by association)
living lying down and suddenly blown:
it is blown back up, partaking of the boats that went before inthe dream state.
suddenly a dark sound swells the sheets,then there are beds sailing to a port
Neruda’s work is like a whirlpool or a cyclone. It circles andpicks up objects and speed, gathering energy and expanding
and there it is, Death, waiting, dressed like an admiral.
(“en donde está esperando” All this discussion isinadequate to Neruda’s use of sound. I feel it most clearly in thisgrand flourish “en donde está”. The King’s high Englishcannot do it justice.)
See the Captain saluting the Admiral. Death,if only for a moment, loses its “sting” not because it’sneutralized. It’s naturalized.
A metaphor effectively creates anew instantaneous image of likeness from difference, a new name for thatrelation and yet, the name of the effective metaphor feels familiar.Bly, citing Barfield, suggests this naming is recollection of“forgotten relations” (“What the Image Can Do”42). Eliot might cite appropriate use of the “objectivecorrelative.” I see this “objective correlative”process as a kind of exchange in motion. One might liken it to caloriesor currency except that it is not a zero sum exchange. The end result,when effective, is “a new thing,” the “life” of“significant emotion” “in the poem” (emphasisadded, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” 33).
Tone is often more tellingthan content. Oliver Sacks in his essay “The President’sSpeech” (80-86) wonders why his patients are laughing at thePresident’s speech. One group has the kind of brain damage thatinterferes with their understanding of words, but they have a heightenedsense of tone. Another patient has no ear for tone, but she has a keenear for the appropriateness of a given word’s relationship to syntax.Both groups were laughing. What is tone but feeling? The stroke victimmay have both expressive and receptive disabilities, but tone may wellbe preserved both receptively and expressively. Children, who havelimited vocabularies, have a sense of tone. Jabberwocky captures tonethrough sound.
At the same time, I think of“Jabberwocky” sometimes in relation to Hemingway’s The OldMan and the Sea. Both narratives participate in hero mythologythough the father/son roles are reversed and the son, in“Jabberwocky,” is apparently successful on his first trip out.One might argue that tone is an inadequate descriptor, that thismythological structure is also necessary to the “sense” of thepoem. Perhaps. But myth interpreted literally does not do its truejob. Myth, arguably, takes its lifeblood from and retains its vitalityin emotional experience. “Come to my arms, my beamish boy!/ Ofrabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
Where Neruda’s death swims in and out of braids, floury faces, brooms,blankets, sheets, sails, feet, bells, etc., Carroll’s“Jabberwocky” swims through toves, borogoves, momes, andfrumious bandersnatches and at the same time holds its own as a poem.How? “Jabberwocky” demonstrates the capacity to achieve“quickening” within a syntactically correct skeleton in theabsence of external objects when tone (perhaps participatingin a mythological framework) is an adequate correlative.
The Attic Which is Desire
Here
from the street
by
***
*S*
*O*
*D*
*A*
***
ringed with
running lights
the darkened
pane
exactly
down the center
istransfixed.
Whatever one might say about the importance of poetry as anaural event, it is clear that Williams’ “SODA,” as writtensurrounded by asterisks is not, intact, an aural event. How would oneread aloud those asterisks? Buzzing like old fluorescents? That sign isvisual. And vertical. The poem’s lines, however, are horizontal, ofuneven length and if read line-by-line, completely irregular metrically.There is no discernible rhythmic pattern stanza compared to stanza. Whatthen was Williams up to?
from the street
by
soda ringed with running lights the darkenedpane exactly down the center
istransfixed
From at least the “sign” to the“center,” the rhythm is regular but not by line. If it is“only” cadence, it is cadence with the point of a plumb line.The aural event is “exactly center,” a leader to plumb thedepths. One “sees” in this poem a kind of cross-hatching(like a Kandinsky) of visual lines against the aural (the rhythmic)vertical. A running contrapuntal. Not fixed. “Transfixed.”
Pyro
All poems makesome use of the visual— particularly those with line breaks.Levertov is so commonly quoted on line breaks’ “half-comma” or“rest,” one would think that a half-breath is the onlyfunction of line breaks. Not so. Line breaks can be visual withoutthat half-breath. They are also markers for cognitive breaks. They canaffect pitch. They might hold the narrative up, but they can also bepropulsive (e.g. “Not/yet!”) They can be ambivalent,teetering meaning on the edge— maybe/not. They can help tosignpost meter (i.e. read from the end of the line backwards todetermine the meter). What a line break “means” in a poem islike asking what a dash “means” as if it has one fixedfunction.
Consider Dana Levin’s “Pyro.” A simple exercisemight clarify the situation. Read “Pyro”, silently. Read“Pyro” aloud. Now, go back and look at the dashes. Thefirst— is what? One thing is clear. Whatever it is, it is visual,not aural. But, silently read, it becomes an oral event. Here’s what Ihear— match, strike on the book of matches, strike on the book ofmatches, all the way through. Next (or actually simultaneously) I hearfire alarm. I actually get the visual of one of those red wall alarmswhere the small hammer hits the bell. Alarm ringing, alarm ringing,alarm ringing. Next, (and simultaneous) I get obsessive intent, theintent of a pyromaniac. At the same time, I get the alarmed“what!” of the victim and “the quick! jump into boots!slide down the ladder!” reactions of the firemen. Now, read thepoem aloud. Has the visual crept into your voice— as tonegenerated by feeling— through a dash? When I read this poemwithout the dash, I read it at best as an engine running on fourcylinders when it could have six. Is it better than WCW’s? I think soin this sense—the dash is a legitimate mark of punctuation. Itstands there by itself and evokes (potentially) all thoseresponses— as well as being a more “traditional”separator. Imagine if the poet, instead of dashes, had used numbers.Many do— conventionally.
You might argue that you don’t read all that into the dash. Perfectlyreasonable. A poem is a relationship. The reader enters into thatrelationship and brings his or her own life, education, experience andrelationship to poetry and other poems. I respectfully submit myreading is within the bounds of the reasonable.
There’s a certain slant of light.
Who can think of dashes without thinking Dickinson? When Iread Dickinson, I sometimes feel, even through the darkness of hersubject matter, that it’s like playing a game of Chutes and Ladders.Usually the object of such a board game is to roll the dice, proceedsequentially and get to the end as fast as possible. But Dickinson willtrip you right down the chute. Your feet hit the dust, and you’rerunning around to climb the ladder back up for the thrill of the slide.Or— sometimes I see her dashes as authoritative “strikeouts,” edits of what she was “supposed” to say and,thankfully, didn’t. That wonderful blank space banished by Dickinson’sdash. The poem, of course, is not only a dash. If Levin’s poem weremerely the dashes, it might give us a sense of “something” butnot enough. In Dickinson’s poem commonly recalled as “a certainslant of light,” only one stanza uses a dash.
‘Tis the seal, despair,—
This dash is the famousDickinson stamp, her bull’s-eye arrow. Dickinson’s poems tend to bevery tight, condensed. Her dashes are connectors and also silences.This Dickinson poem has so many craft elements, it seems to be worthdiscussing in its entirety.
Emily Dickinson is a poet more thanengaged. One might call the spinster happily married and communicatingthe way the happily married do—in a kind of shorthand:
There’s a certain slant of light,
Line one, “There’s a certain slant of light” isnot a complete metaphor. It reflects the power of astute attention by apoet who happened to be an amateur botanist.6 Dickinson’slines are like stars collapsing into themselves. She gets the readerwith the first bow out of her quiver. She lived in Massachusetts wherethat light in winter is very well known. She reports it like ascientist finding the “object that correlates,” but she is,first and foremost, a Poetess. As the poem moves forward, she makesexpress the concrete time and place (“on winter afternoons”),but she also (for those who need a little help) makes explicit thefeeling (“oppresses”). In the same line she uses themulti-variant word “weight” (a scientific measurement) of atangible and a feeling. She is all the way to the fourth line beforeshe completes her metaphor.
There’s a certain slant oflight,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
What is a “cathedral”but the “thing made” by men? The use of the word“tunes” serves a function as a rhyme, but its connotation isdiminution, a stark contrast with the intended glory and grandeur of acathedral. “Cathedral” itself is “a loaded gun.” Inits sights, see architecture, soaring skyward. The actual bricks,mortar, stone can be touched, touching. The stained glass is dark onthe inside but brilliantly colored with outside light. It all streamsthrough. And yet, the “tunes” are inhibited, limited by theceiling no matter how high. One can envision the parishioner in thepew, offering the voice up to God and the sermon and echo falling.Deadening.In the second stanza, Dickinson makes explicit “oppressive”feeling by reversing the feeling and the object.
Heavenly hurt itgives us;
She is also using in this line an adjective/nouncombination “heavenly hurt” that posits a standard metaphoricinherently illogical juxtaposition. “Heavenly” is usuallyused to describe a joyous or ecstatic experience. Here, beatific isplunged into “hurt.” And she’s not done yet. One mightwonder if this is not only a hurt from heaven but also the hurt ofheaven. The adjective/noun combination is ambiguous. When she uses theword “gives,” she is right on top of “gift,” anotheroxymoron but still within the parameter of the meaning of“give.” As she slows the reader down with her line breaks,which mimic that kind of “still” attention to the“real” world, she is beginning to revolve us with thecontradictory connotations of her words, bounded by syntax.
We canfind no scar,
Here is the physician, searching, the flesh looking—but not finding on the flesh.
But internal difference
“The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions thedistempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharpcompassion of the healer’s art.”
(“East Coker” L147-50)
Dickinson marks the location, makes the diagnosis, butshe maintains tension because the injury may still be physical even if“internal.”
Where the meanings are.
“Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.”
(“EastCoker” L 151)
With the authority of completion of the sentence of the stanza afterfour lines, we know the place that matters. The flesh makes its waythrough cognition leading to a vast conclusion. “No ideas but inthings.” Whatever Williams may have meant by that phrase (and Isometimes wonder if it was as misunderstood as the “objectivecorrelative”), we need only read this one poem of Dickinson to see“the flesh made whole.”
I want to pause here for amoment to address the complexity of great poetry. A poem that achievestrue organicity, blood, bones, sinews, must have a pulse. The pulsemust be appropriate to the heart within which it beats. Dickinson’srhythm has already been discussed by experts in form.7 Thecadence here helps slow the pace of the poem, tracking the light.
While we are taking this break from Emily’s“meanings,” the images her words and punctuation disclose, weshould also look at sound. The reader is slid into the poem throughalliteration “certain slant”. But the“l” of “slant” is hooked to the “l” of“light” at the same time the alliteration is disrupted fromsoft vowels “certain” “slant” to long“light”. The sea of sound in poetry isfathomless.8 I am not suggesting that a poet should take uphis pen trying to hold all this cognitively in mind. Rather,sensitivity to the developing swells is helpful while the poet waits (asStafford, in his National Book Award speech suggests) to be found. Toreturn to Dickinson:
None may teach it anything,
This “it” is wild, unteachable, ungovernable,unreachable. Don’t bother with sermons. Dickinson is moving much fasterin this stanza. The syntactical reference of “it” is“heavenly hurt”. She also, by this introduction, prepares usfor the loss of hope made explicit in the next line.
‘Tis the seal, despair,—
First, Dickinson makes great use of the word“seal” with its whole lake of connotations. Sealed—physical, an envelope. Sealed— finished. Sealed— no light.Sealed—the tomb. Sealed—lips. Consider all the tumblingassociations evoked by the use of one word. Hear the rumbling of“scar,” “seal” of seared flesh. She has now drawnthe lightning to ground. Her metaphors transform exterior experienceinto interior experience and back again. “Hurt” is charged upto “despair” immediately coupled with a very concrete use ofthe dash (as concrete as that used by any modern poet) “—“ theseal of despair. Even better, the absolute silence of the dash = theabsolute silence of despair. This mark is the scar that speaks on thepage of a poem made flesh by a poet of flesh and blood. If this is not“incarnation,” I don’t care. Whatever it is, it is far morecreated than manufactured.
An imperial affliction
Our Poetess is again playing with the ambiguity ofconnotation. Is the hurt that of an afflicted God? She raises thequestion without losing the stronghold she has on the speaker’s ownhurt.
Sent us of the air.
Unlike the cathedral, here is theopen air, the poem abiding with that slant of light,internally/externally in all its wonderful impossibilities of logic andholding it— right there, “not fixed, transfixed”.
*S*
*O*
*D*
*A*
***
When it comes, thelandscape listens
This line broadens the reach of the reader to a union withearth, itself. Dickinson personifies the landscape. It“listens.” All the world is imbued with this listening, theattentiveness of the poem. One also has to wonder, given the poem’sending, if that landscape is listening for whether or not it will bebodily joined.
Shadows hold their breath;
Again, Dickinson personifies the shadows, making themmultiple breathing shades where the “hurt” are one with thedead, holding their breath. So close. So close. This use of the linebreak and semi-colon (“close, but not finished”) bothinstructs and persuades.
When it goes, ’tis like the distance
And then, the release “when it goes” and theexact measurement of the naturalist, of the mortal writing thepoem for the mortal reading the poem, the exact distance between“still breathing” and “not” —inspiration andexpiration. Think of all the space that follows that line break, thedistance to the next breath, the next thought, maybe the answer. Thisis the kind of courage, the lack of which, despite her quest and theastuteness of the breaks of her line, that, as Duncan so correctly (andheartbreakingly for them both) said, Levertov turned away from. (Duncan,and Levertov, 663-669). For on each line a poet sails out to that seaof break where lie the “hidden salvages,”9 thereefs. And s/he must be fearless of shipwreck.
On the look of death.
This stunning last line delivers that Look backwards andforwards— Death looking on the reader and the reader looking backat Death, the narrow escape. In the crevice of that light, Dickinson isno Lot’s wife. She is our Hero defying the myth of love-death bydrowning. In the dead of winter—the quickening. A poem, alive andkicking, delivered by an American foremother, Emily Dickinson.
What, exactly is that distance between despair and “when itgoes” to a “’t”? For a poet like Dickinson, the distanceis immortality.
There’s a certain slant of light,
Onwinter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedraltunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None mayteach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,—
An imperialaffliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscapelistens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes,
’tis likethe distance
On the look of death.
See, they depart, and we go with them.
Weare born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us withthem.
(“Little Gidding” L 228-31)
We have an obligationto get to know the poetry of our forbears, but we are here and now.Where are we going? It may be that part of the intensity of the debateor the alarm raised about some of this 21st Century Modernist poetry isa fear that we might lose something important on the way to the nextpoetry place. I imagine that’s possible. We might leap right into freefall. We live in a time of fits and starts and yips and yelps. I’mnot sure we’re telling the truth as artists if we try to wrap that uptoo neatly, delivering small epiphanies for breakfast. I often wonderwhat Akhmatova would be writing if another peasant asked her, “Canyou describe this?” (Akhmatova, “Requiem.”) Would she soquickly say “yes” today? And what would that poem look like?Would it be a long narrative? Might it have fragments? Might itscontent be inconclusive but still beautiful? I don’t know. JoanHoulihan argued that if the 21st Century Modernists were going to do it,you would think someone would have done it by now. Maybe not. I refuseto surrender my options.
The reader of a poem, the solitaryfigure, calls and listens to, at best, an echo until, perhaps after apause, a different call rejoins. But this “response” is notonly the experience of the reader, it also happens to the writer. Theprocess of a poem taking life is strongly this call, which the poethears dimly, “can hardly see.” My first workshop leader said,“Write what matters.” What matters? Is to answer thatquestion the ego’s imperialism? What is the point of a poetry ofdisinterest? What poet, who chooses the word, the break, the place onthe page, the sound, escapes his or her choices?
The poet’srelationship to the poem is only the first of many relationships. Apoem is an organic whole, a complex system, not a contradictionresolved. The poem both answers and asks. A better metaphor might be abirdcall, a whistle back to other poems and to all else that“is.” But even the whistle fails to contain the future“becoming.” Birds are known to learn new songs. A poem isthe known and unknown at the same time, and it is this tension ofresolution and irresolution, this be-coming lack of stasis that is—what else but living?
Robert Bly uses the metaphor of Thor andthe lightning rod (all the power of heaven, grounded) in support of hiscase for soulful poetry (“What the Image Can Do” 48). I agreewith Bly that poetry should be fully charged. In my dreams, at the peakof powers, the poet does not take her hand off that lightning rod. Theknowledge of craft is so readily available that the poet sees more fullythe potentiality in the line break, the image, sound, rhythm, syntax,and semantics. They stride out as channels before the flood, shaping themuscles and sinew, the skeleton, the beating heart, the arteries, theoxygenated blood of that poem. To see that groundswell coming to ringthe bell10 is a poet’s vision as if to see Beatrice whilethe soles of her feet are burning. For those who understand poetry inthis manner, the poet does not own the poem’s intent. “To seewhat there is to be seen”11 is to see the Subjectarising unto itself. We might be swept along on the sound to a wordthat no Reason would reflect,12 and that one word would beright, exact. We need to get out of our own way to makeart.13
While we live in the “lifetimeburning in every moment,” (“East Coker” L 194) eachmoment holds the promise and the challenge of transformation andcontinuity—just like a poem—with its history of poem ancestry,moving and transfiguring itself, its objects, its writer and readers.Why should we waste breath on debate about forms when we all know thatany form can be a dead form? Bly confessed he made his mistake aboutEliot’s objective correlative when he was “trying tohit14 someone and think at the same time.” He says,“Not a good plan.” I agree with my elder. I propose we thinkof relations instead of standards. We have poems with whom we arewilling to having relationships and those with whom we’d rather not.What is “half-heard. In the stillness/Between two waves of thesea”? (“Little Gidding” L 250-51.) Perhaps a poem,quickening.
Notes
2. Before the final draft of this paper, I sent Mr. Blya note with a copy of my comments on his essay in Claims forPoetry. Since that essay was published so long ago, I wanted to givehim the opportunity to say whether he has changed his mind—particularly about Eliot. He wrote me a charming note beginning,“Some idiot must have written that stuff about the objectivecorrelative and TS Eliot. I don’t agree with it at all!. . .” Mr.Bly has changed his mind about Eliot’s use of the objective correlative,but I think it’s fair to say that Mr. Bly, as others, has continuingconcerns that spirit not be lost to American poetry.
3. For avisual model of string theory, seehttp://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/stringtheory.shtml.
4. All poems in the body of the text are in bold to make them easierto read. None of the poems have bold in the original.
5. Thetranslation of Neruda is my own with a nod to both Bly (seeHirsch) and Nathaniel Tarn’s in Pablo Neruda’s Selected Poems,88-91.
6. McDowell 22-26.
7. Finch 13-30/
8.Pinsky.
9. Eliot “The Dry Salvages,” FourQuartets.
10. “ And the ground swell, that is and wasfrom the beginning,/ Clangs/ The Bell.” “The DrySalvages” L46-48
11. To fail to do so, in law, isnegligence.
12. And this sweeping is a 21st century modernist’snotion (See Perloff. 21st Century Modernism, 8, citing RosemarieWaldrop.) Although this poet denies “epiphany”, sheacknowledges this “ vague nucleus of energy,” but one mightconsider Blake and wonder about vision and varieties of experience.
13. Stafford, “ We may remember mostly the long, stupid look atthe material before us.”
14. The handwriting is a bitunclear on the word “hit.” (Private note from Robert Bly toauthor)
*The author wishes to thank Theodore Deppe for histhoughtful comments on drafts of this essay.
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