StormHaven

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

Herewith, our two final, main postings of the semester, by Maggie and Amy, respectively:

The Frank Insinuation of Yusef Komunyakaa

“Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It’s a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.” Yusef Komunyakaa, when asked “What is poetry?”

Not a full frontal assault, maybe, but certainly as a whole, Komunyakaa overwhelmed me with a patented brand of frank insinuation. Paradoxical, no? Well, I’ll explain. He’s frank because he explores issues of sexuality, race, identity, corrigenda with a candor that is several steps above the poetry I’m used to. In fact he does so to the extent of anatomizing certain taboos in a way that is either hyper-confessional (relative to what most people would feel comfortable implying about themselves) or indicative of a supple imagination (capable of rounding out the speakers of his poems, if indeed they are not always himself, with arresting detail.) A poem I think of specifically is “Gloria’s Cues,” a work that seems to delve into a passive and inconsequential lapse into something close to pedophilia, without any evident self-damnation or damnation of the speaker. In general, there is a lot that Komunyakaa unpacks, and sometimes I as the reader am not necessarily surprised at what is found in the suitcase, but maybe just a bit jarred by being privy to it. But he maintains the art of insinuation in his narratives by showing very little consequence following various acts and feelings. I think that this tactic is a specific strength of poetry: these are not morality tales. His isolated poems tend not to make moral arguments. Rather, Komunyakaa uses strategically placed disclaimers, corrigendas as he calls them, to advocate the power of speech that sometimes sacrifices comfort for honesty.

“Gloria’s Clues” is one poem out of many that explores sexuality and in many ways, this particular subject matter seems multiply bonded with the various other themes Komunyakaa insinuates. Rarely is sex present in his poems as a pure celebration of a good lustful romp. Often, it is woven into family relationships, race, violence, the human as an animal, all of which are concerns that pop up often in NEON VERNACULAR. In the neon framework that sex tends provide, he presents scenario after scenario that constantly ask: what is this? why does it happen in our species, in our communities? what is wrong with it or right about it? His poem SONGS FOR MY FATHER presents many of these struggling questions. He reminds us from the start that his and his brothers’ complex relationship with their father began with…sex:

I told my brothers I heard
You & mother making love,
Your low moans like a blues
Bringing them into the world.
I didn’t know if you were laughing
Or crying.

The uncertainty of those last two lines quickly turn to violence as he introduces the tension within this father/son relationship:

Sometimes I think they’re still jealous
Of our closeness, having forgotten
We had to square-off and face each other,
My fists balled & cocked by haymakers.

Thus, Komunyakaa sets up the variable nature of his relationship with his father that echoes throughout the poem. He tells of fond memories (“Sometimes you could be/ That man on a read bicycle,/ With me on the handlebars….”) and he tells of his rage at having encountered explicit family violence (“Goddamn you. Goddamn you./ If you hit her again, I’ll sail through/ That house like a dustdevil.”) But he also tells of the strange union between himself and his father, which culminates in his confession of a shared sense of sexuality with his father, represented by the fact that they slept with the same woman:

Since I sought out one of your lovers
Before you were dead
Though years had passed
& you were with someone else…
Yes, she cried out,
But she didn’t sing your name
When I planted myself in her.

Through this, Komunyakaa implies his own undeniable self that have been passed down to him from his father, turns the poem swiftly from what seems like a renunciation of what his father was capable of to a total admission of his similarities with his father. It is startling, but I find it gracious in a strange sort of way, that he establishes himself in contrast to this man whose behavior he has fought against, but offers his own behavior for inspection. It’s as if he says, “But wait a minute, now that I have your attention, don’t feel sorry for me. Examine me. What do you see? What is this? Why does it happen?”

Throughout his work, Komunyakaa periodically offers the reader a breath in poems where he explains his technique a bit, as in “Safe Subjects”:

How can love heal
the mouth shut this way?
Say something worth breath.
Let it surface, recapitulate…
Say something about pomogranates
Say something about real love.
Yes, true love—more than
parted lips, than parted legs
in sorrow’s darkroom of potash
and blues. Let the brain stumble
from its hidingplace.

These moments, in “Safe Subjects”, “Corrigenda”, and others serve to allow me to distance myself from the striking nature of his content and ask the pertinent questions that his poetry begs. How does Komunyakaa serve us, his anticipating readers, by putting this down on paper? What is particular to the experience of reading poetry that enters into a discourse that would not normally be socially acceptable? Is it because poetry is a passive art form, meaning, it moves only as the reader moves through it (and do you agree with this assertion)? In discussing in another class last week Sade’s text (one can hardly call it a novel) JUSTINE, a work saturated with radically taboo material, some grotesque to the extent that I really hesitate to discuss it in the same breathe as Komunyakaa, a few people said that they just had to close the book when it reached the upper limits of raunchy. This incited a discussion of the power that is vested in the reader: readers can stop the movement of the text they are reading. This is not necessarily true of many of our most modern media forms: many of them move on their own, and in a way that I think is more swiftly intoxicating than reading. There was never a moment when I felt like closing NEON VENACULAR; nothing Komunyakaa wrote shocked me, mostly I found his candor intriguing and his periodic disclaimers soothing and refocusing. Ultimately, I think Komunyakaa’s refusal to damn the behavior in his poetry expanded its use. I find myself much more full of questions and internal debate than I am when I’ve just read a poet whose voice I comfortably relate to.

Posted by: Margaret Poist | April 27, 2008 at 09:34 PM

Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Neon Vernacular”– the title nearly says it all. A number of the selected poems, and most of the new ones (which I liked the best, I think), attest to Komunyakaa’s “vision”  as one that deliberately invokes the past, present, and future. If Warren and his clan consistently look over their shoulders to the past (and sometimes frantically try to “keep up” with the present), Komunyakaa seamlessly moves from his childhood, to Vietnam, to the implications all past/present experiences have for the future. While it seems his identity is quite grounded in /tied to his upbringing in LA (Louisiana– not California, or “Lower Alabama”), or the “vernacular,” he is also consciously responding to how that identity fairs as (and affects) an adult who has traveled far from rural LA, into the “neon,” and then returns, altered, in some respects, but not entirely. “Salt” is illustrative of this– he cannot even remember the woman’s name (“Lisa, Leona, Loretta?”) but can give a full account of the atrocities in her family history, and she, though as children together they “played doctor & house”) responds to him by grabbing her purse and pulling at her skirt. In other words, because of the complicated history of their families (as his relationship to hers is one of “housekeepers/ & handymen”), and in spite of their personal history of interacting as children, they do not even speak when they encounter one another as adults.

Additionally, “Neon Vernacular,” in a more general rather than personal way, appears in Komunyakaa’s regular invocation of Hughes (Langston not Ted), and also of Dunbar (particularly in poems from “Copacetic” with all of its masks). This seems entirely appropriate, as Hughes set about for himself a similar (but of course different, as well) project of making the “vernacular” “neon.” I’m thinking of course of Komunyakaa’s persistent incorporation of jazz and blues into his work– evidenced by overt allusions and (obviously) by titles: “Changes; or, Reveries at a Window...,” “Elegy for Thelonious,” “Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival,” etc.– the list is entirely too long. But also of poems like “The Plea,” with its refrain of “Bop, bop, bebop, rebop”– “Montage” anyone? (Despite all of Hughes’s work, and of the “progress,” particularly economic, in the South, I think we still tend to consider any cultural product (whether produced by black or white artists) that comes out of the rural, deep South as being somehow “vernacular,” more tied to “folk” traditions (especially unwritten ones) than writing or art that is produced in NYC, for example– which makes YK’s use of such stereotypes interesting, as I’m under the impression he hasn’t lived in LA for a while.)

While Komunyakaa’s invocation of Hughes is apparent (sometimes even a little too much so, even for me), I think he also bears some similarity to Heaney and Milosz. As to Heaney, I’m sure everyone was reminded of his work when reading “Landscape for the Disappeared”– is this a conscious reference to Heaney? (“Yes, peat bogs/ in Louisiana”). And actually, the sorts of images that YK invokes are quite similar to the ones I myself was musing on when I read Heaney’s account of bogs across the big pond swallowing up/preserving disposed of bodies. The notion that the landscape literally holds our, the South’s, secrets is an eery if often invoked one (Lord only knows how many bodies the swamps in LA or the rivers throughout the Delta have held– I always think of folks dragging rivers for certain unlawfully disposed of persons and finding about 5 or 6 bodies that aren’t even the ones sought after). In other words, while Heaney’s description of the bogs as graves is more fascinating then horrifying (though perhaps I’d feel differently if I lived in European environs), Komunyakaa’s is painful, spooky, and unsettling. I think the “spookiness” of YK’s account goes back to silence (not unlike that present in “Salt”), of what we refuse to talk about/acknowledge even when we all know, and maybe also to the more recent-ness of it– it’s one thing to talk about sacrificial murders from “way back when,” but it’s an entirely different matter to find bodies disposed of within the last 50 years.

YK’s similarity to Milosz, I think, is his sense of guilt (which also could be read as similar to Heaney, though like Milosz, YK’s seems a bit more intense than Heaney’s). But like his similarity to Heaney, YK’s guilt manifests itself in radically different terms. While Milosz feels guilt over leaving the site of conflict, YK tries to come to terms with placing himself in the midst of it. I’m thinking, of course, of his Vietnam poems, from his collection, “Dien Cai Dau.” I was particularly struck by “Hanoi Hannah” and “Report from the Skull’s Diorama.” I must confess that most of the accounts of black men’s roles in Vietnam that I’ve read have not been written by those who went and, instead, are arguments against going. Not only to deal with the psychological stress of war, but also to be listening to radio announcements from back home, tauntingly asking, “‘Soul Brothers, what you dying for?’” must have been nearly unmanageable. I think it’s easy for us of the post-Vietnam generation to get caught up in the rhetoric of why someone shouldn’t have gone to Vietnam and to lose those voices that went (and may not have chosen to go). YK, in “Report” especially, expresses an awareness of the injustice at work both at home and abroad, and is yet still participating in and suffering from it simultaneously– hearing about King’s assassination while napalming villages is understandably haunting, particularly with flyers circulating that state “VC didn’t kill/ Dr. Martin Luther King”– and once again, “silence” on the matter.

(On Tuesday, I also want to chat about “Changes; or, Reveries at a Window...” as it is one of my favorites– I’ve experimented with reading it in different ways and have yet to be disappointed, and I think we’ll also have to discuss the Thorn Merchant poems, though as of now, I’m not sure what to say about them that’s not completely obvious...)

Posted by: alschmidt | April 27, 2008 at 09:45 PM

 

RPW: AN OLD MASTER NEWLY CONFIGURED

What to say about the Old Master?  The only American to win Pulitzer Prizes in poetry and fiction . . . that's a start.  Easily, with Cleanth Brooks, the most popularly influential American literary critic of the post-50's era, and only because of the utterly pervasive Understanding Poetry and Understanding Fiction, the two text books that taught American high school and college teachers to teach literature they way that Warren and Brooks wanted it taught . . . that's another reason.  And then, pure longevity:  Warren's writing career spans a good half-century.  He wrote a lot, and he wrote well.

But people generally don't read his poems as much as his fiction.  Understandable, particularly since All the King's Men is now a "major motion picture," which I've never seen.  But his body of poetry in some ways not only develops, but careens through its phases in a way that I've always found to be typically American, at least, and perhaps typically poetic. 

And this last statement will require a bit of elucidation.

Warren was a voracious reader, a life-long student, and a devoted amateur philosopher.  And what he read, what he studied, and what he philosophized about appeared in his poetry, varyingly digested.  I'm calling this project of synthesis--and that's what is was for Warren--an essentially poetic project because, while the poetry rises from Warren's immense preparation, it also rises in a form that hardly resembles its sources.  There is transformation here of an extraordinary kind.  That's what I'm calling poetic:  synthesis and transformation, taking a known quantity, reworking it, and giving it back in its newly resplendent form.  This, or something like it, stands at the heart of Warren's contribution to letters, and while it can be argued that all poetry does this, I would argue that Warren's poetry attempts this project in a way, and to a degree, that most poetry doesn't.

Take Audubon, for example.  Just what in the world is that poem?  A history of a Franco-American painter?  A confession?  A poetic aviary?  A depiction of the American frontier before the Civil War, the event that Warren claimed was the continental divide for the American imaginative writer?  But what is the goal of the poem?  Maybe it is this (Section IV):

To wake in some dawn and see,

As though down a rifle barrel, lined up

Like sights, the self that was, the self that is, and there,

Far off but in range, completing that alignment, your fate.

The self that was, is, and will be:  these are the parameters of story, and story is the supreme ordering device of our lives.  We tell them to our friends and to ourselves.  Perhaps this is why the last line of this poem is simply, "Tell me a story of deep delight."

One of the most effective ways of reading Warren--try this as you go through him--is to list his subjects, and then, after you've done that, star those that you'd categorize as obsessions.  His development to me is orderly and encyclopedic--there's a wealth of information here, but it's all easy to find.  Try this, and let me know what you think.

MILOSZ'S BALANCING ACT

Last week, with Heaney, we talked a lot about balance, about balancing politics with art, and seemed to be in agreement that Heaney accomplished such a balance. In that respect (not in terms of chronology), Czeslaw Milosz out-Heaneys-Heaney. I also commented last week that by describing specific “political” events or tragedies, can be a way of dealing with that specific tragedy but also with more “universal” tragedy, and Milosz accomplishes that as well. Becoming so engaged with his collection that I did not want to, nor could I, put it down, I was emotionally exhausted by the time I finished Milosz. Part of his ability to write “universally” (for lack of a better word) is his collapsing of time and space. Of course we can call this technique “postmodern” or something of the sort, but it’s much more than that (though there are also a few mentions of binaries being inadequate/constructed/etc.- particularly along the lines of gender; I’m thinking of “Table I” and another that I can’t lay my finger on just now). It is not surprising that someone who witnessed firsthand just how dangerously fluid political and geographic barriers can be (of “fictitious States” (“Fear-Dream”), and “Countries and cities that must remain without name, for how can I explain/ why and how many times they changed their banners and emblems?” (“Capri”)) would be able to transcend such (or similar) barriers in his. Nor is it surprising that someone who a) lived such a long life, but more importantly, b) saw the shifting of spatial boundaries occur so rapidly over such a short period of time due to the “forces of history” would be taken with the idea that the past is always present and that the present is always a part of the future. A sort of cyclical view of history and time so that the same sorts of tragedies repeat themselves in different places at different times. Words like “anywhere” and “nowhere” pepper Milosz’s poems as do confessions of not being able to remember precisely what year/month/day something happened (and of course it doesn’t really matter when exactly or where exactly). The most obvious illustration of this theme is “City Without a Name” in which he remembers a place from his youth but is in California (“the feast of Insubstantiality./ Under a gathering of clouds anywhere,”and “not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn;” “there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the day are simultaneous”) Such a view, as I’ve described it, sounds rather depressing, but I don’t get the sense that Milosz held a completely cynical or pessimistic view of humanity; there seems to be an underlying sense of hope, a faith that things can and will get better (and of course, he lived to see it, at least partially accomplished). One of Milosz’s earlier poems, “Campo Dei Fiori,” exemplifies this: at first we recoil from people going about their business while a man is publically burned (“Before the flames had died/ the taverns were full again,/ baskets of olives and lemons/ again on the vendors’ shoulders”), but towards the end of the poem, when Milosz/the speaker, “I,” responds to the event, his impulse is to be “a voice” for the forgotten (“our tongue becomes for them”– a line which absurdly reminds me of Zora Neale Hurston) with the hope that immortalizing the tragedy will perhaps prevent it from happening again (“on a new Campo dei Fiori/ rage will kin dle at a poet’s word”). The idea that words can change the world for the better recurs throughout Milosz’s collection, particularly in poems such as “Incantation” (which in his intro to the collection, Heaney seems quite taken with, especially the line about poetry being an “ally in the service of the good”). The idea that language or poetry “puts what should be above things as they are” and is also able to open “the congealed fist of the past” pervades Milosz’s writing, though in other poems, it is less explicit. (Something we may want to discuss is the tension or difference between his view of art’s purpose and the Communist regime’s view– I take it from Milosz’s obituary in the New York Times that he was dissatisfied with the latter, so I think we should ask what the difference is between art that changes the world and art as explicit propaganda.) Living long enough to see a positive change (and geographically escaping it for a time), however, seems to have produced a strong sense of grief and guilt– for example, “To Raja  Rao,” he confesses that all of the moving about leaves him not only feeling displaced (“on the border of schizophrenia”) but also with “guilt and shame” (This seems not unlike Heaney’s guilt, though Milosz seems to be more intense, nearly obsessive until the last bit of the collection). Such  guilt and grief often manifests through memorializations of folks who were not as fortunate as Milosz, who were not able to escape the political turmoil or who did not desire to. Remembering these folks, trying to immortalize them and their pain in his writing, is the impetus (or one of them) for believing that the past is always present. Again, in “City without a Name,” Milosz/the speaker keeps wondering why the places/people of his youth “keep offering itself” to him, and argues that h e must remember, must write about them, “because except for me no one else knows that they ever/ lived”). There seems to be an inability to escape memory, and this is what produces a sense of haunting (I’m thinking of “Yellow Bicycle,” “Mister Hanusevich,” “Kazia,” “Classmate,”and of “Six Lectures in Verse” which bares, I think, striking similarities to Heaney’s “Station Island”). At times this memorializing seems similar to Heaney’s appreciation for where he came from, but at others, Milosz exudes a sense of being haunted by the past, by his role, or lack of one, in it, so that the writing of people/places/events becomes cathartic– an outlet for his personal demons (which I think is probably what makes reading his poetry for a sustained period of time emotionally exhausting). Another similarity to Seamus is Milosz’s relationship with language, or language (which one you choose to use) as political. It is, I think, significant that Milosz wrote his poems (even while at Berkeley) in Polish, though he had the ability to write in what, like 6 or 7 different languages? His dedication to Polish comes up several times (in “Capri” he blesses the rivers, but pronounces their “names in the way my mother pro-/ nounced them”), but certainly in what seems to be an ode of sorts to language, “My Faithful Mother Tongue,” in which it becomes god-like, with Milosz/the speaker offering “little bowls of colors” to it even when he is “a scholar in a distant country” (and his refrain of “without you, who am I”– again, not unlike Seamus, Milosz sees language not only as political but as part of his personal identity). I’m going to stop gushing now, and gushing I’m afraid I have been, but I must confess (and this is probably painfully obvious) that I found this collection one of the most moving we’ve read this semester.

SEAMUS, AS IN 'FAMOUS,' HEANEY, AS IN 'SWEENEY'

Literary culture has changed in America over the past three decades.  Or rather, literary culture hasn't changed so much--people still write, some still read, conferences are still held, books still published--but the context in which books are read has changed dramatically.  And since humans are sponges, of varying degress of absorption, their reading is affected by the changing contexts.  And so is their writing.   I had a conversation recently with an award-winning documentary film maker, and I felt the old excitement I had once in a conversation with Derek Walcott about Omeros:  scope, ambition, cultural definition, and comprehensiveness.  All of these qualities I felt when I spoke to Walcott, and all of these qualities I have found lacking in recent literary conversations, projects, and programs.  To be blunt:  I've felt a seismic shifting of creative energy recently away from the verbal arts and into the visual arts.  Particularly the visual arts that view music and language as the rich soil from which the images live and grow.

I bring this up here because Heaney used to introduce himself at readings, humourously of course, by saying, "My name is 'Seamus' as in famous and 'Heaney' as in Sweeney."  He did it with a kind of wry sensibility of who he was and who he had become:  a songbird fascinated with lyric, or Sweeney--the way he always characterized himself in private conversation--and a famous, politically engaged commentator on the Irish problem, or Seamus.  To a very large degree, these two names, and the roles they indicated, define his career.  Have a look at "Making Strange," one of the classic statements of Heaney's middle position.

Poems like "Station Island"," which we'll want to look at in some detail next week, and "The Haw   Lantern" reveal a poet attempting to weigh his "responsible tristia" against the long, hard pull of political commitment.  And then poems like "Postscript" show us the unfettered lyricist, the singer, and they remind us of the vital counterweight to political action; they remind us of the lyric's necessarily irresponsible buoyancy, its wish to escape the world's gravitational pull, and provide the long view on human suffering.  Seen from the moon, the earth is a beautiful blue-green orb that blows our heart open, to paraphrase Heaney, and it is the moon's-eye view that belongs to the lyric.

My point is that few poets nowadays face the questions that Heaney faced.  To write for his "country," however that might be defined, or to write for his lyric spirit, however that might be defined.  The poles here are politics and art, and their engagement is ever and always a contentious one, but in the hands of a strong writer, a productive one.

Why?  Because readers are innately drawn to subject matters of complexity and human force.  Complexity is most often seen whenever we have a look at the individual's place in the context of the larger culture . . . How and why do we live the way we live?  What or who stands in the way of our living the way we want to live?  And what can be done about these things?  These are innately political questions, but before they were labeled 'political' questions, they were human questions, and the poetry that engages these issues must be true both to its native genius--its melody--and to its larger subjects. 

It's a difficult balance to achieve.  When it tips toward rampant lyricism, the poetry is little more than navel-gazing, and we have more of that just now, I suspect, than we've ever had.  When it indulges too heavily its political appetite, it devolves to polemicism, and to my mind, we saw a little of that in Howl. 

As you read through the rest of Heaney (and as I said, have a good look at the long poem, "Station Island"), pay special attention to poems that chart out the territory of poetry and its dangerous relation to politics.  There are scores of them, but come to class with a quiver-full, and we'll begin to formulate some general ideas on Heaney's ideas.  Also, make certain to read very carefully Heaney's Nobel address, included at the end of the collection.  If you don't have it, it's available, of course, on line.   

SEAMUS HEANEY'S 'OPENED GROUND'

Our chosen collection of poetry by Seamus Heaney begins with one of his most famous, "Digging." That poem immediately creates a continuity and sense of cohesion with the title of this volume, OPENED GROUND. The initial poem sees the speaker--presumably Heaney, typically characterized as a very personal, if not confessional, poet--meditating on the hard manual labor done by his father and grandfather:

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog. (3)

Heaney himself also sees himself as a digger, but of a cultural digger, rather than a physical one. The poem concludes:

But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. (4)

Heaney's "Digging" is probably his most anthologized poem, and for good reason: it many ways it encapsulates his approach and philosophy toward poetry, or art in general. There is a sense in his verse that Heaney approaches his poetry as a process of excavation; language as a means of uncovering--rather than creating--identity, both personal and cultural/national. Personal and group identities can be found in the subconscious--individual for the former, collective for the latter--and it is through literature and language that we unearth, understand, and often recover those identities.

Heaney's interest in "digging" up identity can hardly be discussed without reference to the Irish identity and "the Troubles." But, first, a slight detour: I would like to point out the personal nature of Heaney's work, and his interest in individual identity, before touching on his national concerns. Clearly, Heaney's work can be deeply and intensely personal: the best example is perhaps "Mid-Term Break," describing his return home for the funeral of a four-year brother. Returning to "Digging," one of its characteristics that has always struck me is the personal attachment Heaney seems to feel towards his father and grandfather's trade. There is a sense that it goes beyond admiration: Heaney sees this type of work--unearthing--as part of his own lineage and identity. The amount of descriptive attention and detail given to their manual work, compared to his form of digging, also suggests a sense of guilt over his methodology. Yes, he is "digging" metaphorically--but he'd rather be doing so literally.

These veneration for the working class and "common man" seems to run throughout much of Heaney's poetry. I've read "The Forge" multiple times and--try as I might--I don't see much more to the poem than an ode to a blacksmith. Of coures, to quote a famous episode of SEINFELD, "not that there's anything wrong with that." My point is rather simply: Heaney holds a great deal of respect for physical laborers, and that admiration manifests itself in his poetry. However, it is more than just respect or veneration. The world of the peat shoveller or blacksmith is the world with which Heaney personally identifies. Heaney brings poetry into the hands of the workers: rather than a form used by intellectuals and the elite for grand meditations, it is a craft--a trade, a tool--used to work, build, uncover, and refine.

Of course, such a position regarding poetry and personal identity must have implications toward   the collective, and Heaney is no stranger to issues of national identity. Many of Heaney's most interesting poems to deal with the national and cultural identity of the Irish come in the form of his "bog poems." Preserved bodies and other archeological finds have often been found buried deep within the bogs, making it an apt metaphor for uncovering and mythologizing a collective Irish identity and experience.

Another of Heaney's famous poems, "Punishment," uses the bog to unify Irish experiences over time in an attempt to reconcile conflicts within the nationalist Irish identity. In the first nine stanzas of the poem, Heaney describes the partially preserved body of a woman dragged from the bog. Heaney presumes that the woman--who had been weighed down and blindfolded--was abused and executed as punishment for adultery. Yet, as he feels great sympathy for the woman he deems a "scapegoat," he realizes his own hypocrisy when considering contemporary Irish women who have affairs with British soldiers:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge. (113)

Here we have the internal conflict that still affects so many modern Irish (and other peoples as well): how does one preserve decency and avoid cruelty, while at the same time protect cultural traditions and identity? Heaney has no interest in punishing Irish women, but is deeply attuned to the impulse that does so when they violate codes that are designed to protect the clan. Heaney doesn't necessarily solve the problem, but he does bring it to the fore, and exposes the conflict--and the need to reconcile it--as a defining feature of the collective Irish identity and experience. Again, this excavation is Heaney's way of fulfilling his role as a workman--by unearthing and digging out the ore of identity, both personal and national, he is making it available and ready to be refined.

--Jack Ayres

HUNTING HUGHES

With our comments on Bishop echoing still in my brain (our discussions of poetry illuminating our own experiences and of my hesitant asking of “so what”), I read most of Ted Hughes’s collection from a deck overlooking a portion of the Gulf that is relatively free from tourist trade– a rather appropriate scene for digesting Hughes’s recurring glorifications of the natural world. On the particular afternoon I came across “Ghost Crabs” (I think originally collected in “Wodwo”), I was coincidentally recovering from a late night of crab-hunting. My Daddy and brother, two righteously committed sportsmen, pass up no opportunity to hunt down anything in their environs that might be tracked, caught, and either put to good use or released back into the natural habitat. And they convinced me to (uncharacteristically) join their expedition for crabs, particularly ghost crabs as they had spotted several already but were unprepared to capture them. Thus, with a trained labrador retriever leading the way, we set out with nets, and other implements they assured me would be necessary, to hunt down crabs by moonlight. Ultimately, we succeeded in catching only one– such a minuscule catch that everyone else deemed our effort a failure. Reading “Ghost Crabs” the following afternoon, however, I felt the hunt much more satisfying than the poem.

As any “good” graduate student would/does, I of course had to consider why, what accounts for this effect (or lack of it), and what are the implications of it, etc. Again, I was still mulling over Bishop so decided to use my response to her collection as a point of comparison. As you all know, Bishop’s poems I like best are those of South America (and also, “Filling Station” as I’m sure I’ve been to that exact one) because I can “see them better,” drawing on my own personal experiences to make sense of hers. This logic, however, doesn’t in any way account for my response to Hughes (Ted, not Langston), who produced a number of poems I can “see” without much effort but still left me asking, “so what” (though I’m certain I learned a little something about the reproductive habits of sheep and other livestock, and the mating rituals of insects). This set me about contemplating the inadequacy of language to convey our experiences to others: I would rather hunt for crabs myself than read Hughes’s poem about them (similarly, back to Langston, much as I adore his work, I would rather be on Beale Street than to read his poem about it). It seems that with Hughes (Ted) this inadequacy of language becomes particularly emphasized because of his subject matter.

Indeed, the (constructed) tension between the natural world and the written language we (not just Ted) try to impose upon it is introduced immediately with “The Thought-Fox” (at least this is the first selection in my edition, yes?). (I’m aware that this dangers on setting up a dichotomy between nature/culture, or something along those lines, and I don’t think that this is always the case. For all of my grappling with Bishop, she seems to reconcile the two adeptly; and of course the imagined presence of such a tension is a very “Western” idea.) Okay, so Hughes’s inspiration comes from nature, but is he caging it, or trying to, in the same manner he describes the effect of a zoo on the very next page (“The Jaguar”)? Hughes seems to be aware of this conundrum, as evidenced in “The Man Seeking Experience...” and “The Crow’s First Lesson” in which God’s attempts to teach the crow to speak result only in its vomiting. Hughes also often describes a sort of feeling-out-of-place-ness when fishing or engaging in some other outdoor activity (“Recklings,” “Earth-Numb,” “A Cormorant”). Significantly, in “Go Fishing” as Hughes/the speaker is describing a sort of transcendent union with nature, one of the effects of “Join[ing the] water” is to “lose words.”

But, interestingly, Hughes has the natural world speak (thistles are like “the gutturals of dialects” (“Thistles”), dandelions and cinders “cry” “‘Do not go’” (“Song of a Rat”)– though the rat can only “screech,” and of course the speaking produce, fowl, elements, etc., in “Leaves”– but with the addition of a tractor(?); similarly, the river has a conspicuously italicized speaking line in “Salmon Eggs,” and whale-speak occupies several stanzas in quotation in “Little Whale Song”). Other times, Hughes speaks for nature– assuming the perspective/persona of a hawk in “Hawk Roosting” or of a crow in “A Flayed Crow...” (There also seem to be an awful lot of poems entitled “Such and such’s Song” (replace the “such and such” with any animal you can conceive of), especially in selections from “Crow.”)

Despite his recognition of this tension, Hughes continues, over a period of thirty-plus years, to attempt to invoke it, evade it, resolve it, and I’m not sure he ever accomplishes the last– an issue which recalls this business about Eliot (T.S.) setting himself a task, accomplishing it, and then no longer feeling a need to write poetry. In other words, never reconciling the (constructed) tension between nature and language, perhaps Hughes couldn’t put the pen down so to speak.

Ultimately, I must confess that all of this prattling about Ted’s inability to reconcile a tension (I don’t necessarily even believe exists) between language and the natural world is mostly an attempt to evade another one of this themes– his presentation of gender and sexuality and an apparent fascination with Adam/Eve mythology. I wanted to give Ted “his due,” so I’ve avoided this last matter for now, though I’m sure I’ve a better understanding of why Sylvia put her head in an oven.

BISHOP, THE BEST OF HER GENERATION?

When Elizabeth Bishop died on October 6, 1979, she left behind a substantial and well considered body of poetry. And by substantial I don’t mean large: several volumes of poems, translations, stories, personal essays, personal reminiscences, reviews, and a lot of letters. Take a look at the Library of America edition, and you get a good idea of her work: in a 900-page volume, you’ve got 180 pages of published poetry, and another 80 pages of uncollected and unpublished verse. The remaining 640 pp. are translations and various kinds of prose. So far, she’s the only writer of her generation to be given a volume in the Library of America—no Berryman, no Lowell, no Sexton—and there are reasons for this that I’d like to examine.

 

Bishop’s clarity was a quality that surfaced early in her writing and never deserted her. Here she is as a schoolgirl, writing about being alone: “Why does being alone, when we have a hundred companions most of the time, present such a great trial, or why should we wish to keep the conversation going so endlessly? The fear of a ‘quiet hour’ alone is greater than the fear of all those innumerable quiet hours alone that are ahead of all of us.” This was in 1929 when she was 18 years old. Fifty years later, writing her last poem, “Pink Dog,” to a hairless, dilapidated dog in Rio de Janeir0, she begins: “The sun is blazing and the sky is blue. / Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue. / Naked, you trot across the avenue.” The poem continues for twelve more triplets—an accomplishment in and of itself—and ends with the warning: “Carnival is always wonderful! / A depilated dog would not look well. / Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!” Whether writing poetry or prose, Bishop over the half-century that brackets her work never varied from this kind of clean, terse clarity.

 

My point is that clean and terse wear well. While I once loved John Berryman’s work more than I have loved anyone’s poetry outside of John Milton’s, I no longer read him. I have tried. He doesn’t wear well. Ditto with a lot of Robert Lowell. Like anyone my age, I once found Lowell’s brooding and manic eloquence, his addiction to American history, or rather his addiction to inserting himself dramatically into American history, and his astounding ability to move from national history to personal history, I once found these techniques riveting and revealing. Not so much now. His poems seem eloquent, they seem learned, they seem manic, they seem depressed, they seem excited, but they don’t seem essential to my reading life. Certainly this is partly my age—I find myself in my fifties reading things over and over that would have seemed negligible to me twenty years ago—Joan Didion, for example. And Elizabeth Bishop as well.

 

But I’ve always read Elizabeth Bishop, and even secretly read her work when, as a hard-drinking, slow-talking Southern writer who was trying very hard to live up to the Dickeyesque stereotypes, I was supposed to have been reading Faulkner and Tate. She has Auden’s ability to say something well, rhythmically, and memorably. Here’s the first stanza of “Letter to N.Y.:” “In your next letter I wish you’d say / where you are going and what you’re doing; / how are the plays, and after the plays / what other pleasures you’re pursuing.” Auden could do this effortlessly, and the qualities that we might assign to these lines have to do, I believe, with their longevity.

 

Music matters. At the most profound physical level, the iambic foot is central to our heart beating, to our clocks ticking, to our feet tapping. The last two feet of the first line are perfect iambs, and it’s one of the unassailable rules of Latin prosody that the penultimate foot of the line has a lot to do with our overall impression of the line. Bishop breaks that rhythm throughout the rest of the poem, but the bass-line iambic rhythm rumbles all the way through it.  And we feel this, I believe, and we respond to it at a physical level.

 

But music isn’t enough. There has to an argument laid over the melody, a way of looking at the world that profits from the momentum the music provides, but isn’t overwhelmed by it. Bishop mastered this skill from the beginning. “Crusoe in England,” for example, a poem that continually walks a line between nationalist speculation and historical narrative. Or “In the Waiting Room,” a kind of extended treatment of childhood perception. But all done in that rhythmic way that propels the poem through its argumentative paces. Here’s the last stanza, after having read The National Geographic while waiting for her Aunt Consuelo to come out of the dentist’s office: “Then I was back in it. / The War was on. Outside, / in Worcester, Massachusetts, / were night and slush and cold, / and it was still the fifth / of February, 1918.” She manages this transition from the child’s world to the larger adult world of war effortlessly.

 

So, music and argument. There’s a third component, diction, and that’s something that replays consideration as well, but we’ll save this one for class. But consider these questions: How would you characterize her diction? American? Latinate? European? And what about the larger cultural and political concerns that often condition diction? The Sixties were part of her stomping grounds. And Vietnam. And Woodstock. And drugs. Where are these kinds of words? How accurate do you find her presentations of American life?  Do we live in a world created by Elizabeth Bishop?

 

 

Think about these things. Think about her readability, and think about her in light of the NEA report.

 

We’ll take it from there on Tuesday, March 11.

 

 

 

MY PROBLEM WITH 'HOWL'

I had a certain hesitancy about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" before I had ever even read the poem, which I did not do until my fourth year as an undergraduate. I'm aware that this pre-judgment seems patently unfair, but allow to explain:

For years, going back as far as high school, I suffered through my peers talking about the brilliance of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and the whole Beat movement. My fellow teens and undergrad would whimsically pontificate upon how illuminating the work was, and how it spoke to them. However, whenever I pressed them for details, they were unable to provide explanations. My theory was always that they liked the Beats because it gave them the encouragement and rationalization to take drugs.

A related anecdote: I recently had a brief conversation with my girlfriend about The Beatles. Referring to some friends who had said they didn't like the band, she asked, "How can *anyone* not like the Beatles? I mean, they're the Beatles? How can you not just automatically recognize that they're the best band ever?" I WANTED to ask her why exactly she was so positive they were "the best band ever,"--what was the criteria for making such a claim, and how did The Beatles fulfill it--but I've learned from past experiences with women that it's often best just to let those things slide. As far as I'm concerned, for every truly beautiful and timeless Beatles song, there's another borderline maudlin and conventional to match. So, I don't think it's the music itself that has made so many young people of my generation "automatically recognize" the greatest of the Beatles; I think it's because that's what they've been told since they could remember such things. And who has been telling them? Their parents, and all the other Baby Boomers--the rebels turned establishment who refuse to let go of their youth.

It's hardly surprising that the Boomers fawn over and exalt the Beatles every opportunity they can: for their generation, the Beatles really were more than just a band--they were spiritual, moral, and political guides. Unfortunately, even though the Boomers eventually cast aside their youthful ideals, they refused to cast aside their youthful obsessions. The defining characteristics of the Baby Boomer is self-absorption, and they have clung to the belief that what was important to them as youth is important to all youth. And, their indoctrination has been successful.

My impression is that most young people my age who speak of the brilliance of "Howl" weren't really moved by it; rather, they just thought they were supposed to be moved by it. Although the poem can be rightfully commended for its audaciousness, and does have genuine moments of lyrical beauty, I tend to find its self-absorption and presumptuousness frustrating. For me, the poem is an engaging, amusing, and even well-crafted artifact of the period, yet it now lacks some credibility and a legitimate contemporary relevance.

In many ways, "Howl" represents the worst the Boomer generation had to offer--though perhaps also the best. Ginsberg displays the petulant qualities of the Boomers--their smugness and self-centeredness--from the opening lines of his poem:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by / madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn / looking for an angry fix (9)

I cannot help but agree with Phillip Lopate, who--in his article, "Howl and Me"--finds it just a tad presumptuous of Ginsberg to declare himself the spokesman of "his" generation. It seems a bit unfair for someone to speak on behalf of everyone who, by mere coincidence, was born within the same fifteen year window. Not only does Ginsberg (and I will use "Ginsberg" rather than "the speaker") find it appropriate to appoint himself the representative of his generation, he manages to point out that he and his friends are "the best minds" of it. In "Footnote to 'Howl'" he goes as far as to canonize his comrades ("Holy Kerouac")! In many ways, "Howl" becomes Ginsberg's self-indulgent ode to the brilliance of his divinely-inspired clique, who speak for the less capable through idiosyncratic art and reckless behavior.

This presumption to speak for an entire generation is even more frustrating when one looks at the  behavior Ginsberg describes and, at least implicitly, endorses:

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly / connection to the starry dynamo in the machi / nery of night, / who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat / up smoking in the supernatural darkness of / cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities / contemplating jazz...who were expelled from the academies" (9)

Ah, the romance of dropping out and getting high! Of course, with the exception of those lucky few such as Ginsberg who could behave this way and succeed, this philosophy really is nothing more than a romance. Lopate--who does admit to enjoying the poem both as a youth and an adult--criticizes Ginsberg's romanticization. Lopate write:

What about all those working stiffs who would not end up raving lunatics, who could not afford to drop out, were we automatically judged mediocre, and condemned to a lower status than 'the best minds,' by dint of negleting or refusing to fall apart? (89)

I think Lopate helps illuminate a major problem of "Howl": in many ways, it is a spoiled teenagers fantasy. It is a shrieking cry for attention; an outburst. Tantrums are hard to ignore, and they can even be somewhat entertaining, but they're also irritating. I see "Howl" has something of a foot-stomping tantrum, even if it was borne of genuine frustration. I don't believe the legitimacy of that anger truly resonates with most young readers now, though. Perhaps they relate to the general sense of disillusionment in the poem, but I think it's more likely that teens enjoy the poem because they been told it's a teen's poem.

"Howl" is an interesting poem and not a poorly written poem. However, I do think that it has been unfairly exalted. In many ways, the Beats are a blip in the political, social, and artistic history of the United States. Yet, since it flourished during the youth of the Boomers--that period which forever defines them and they refuse to relinquish--it has been granted a prestige and importance it does not really deserve.

Posted by: Jack Ayres | February 29, 2008 at 10:51 PM

T.S. ELIOT: MODERNIST . . . BUT CONTEMPORARY?

Upon my first reading of Eliot's "Four Quartets," I was pleasantly surprised by what Dr. Burris identifies as an admirable consistancy in Eliot's body of work. I expected the Eliot of "FQ" to be quite different than the Eliot of "The Wasteland"-- somewhere along the way, someone(s) gave me the impression that the later, reconciled Eliot contrasted starkly with the earlier, discontented one (that his "conversion" greatly impacted his writing, and that his poetics pre-conversion were worth much more time/study). I suppose I see now what would cause one to make such a distinction, but I prefer seeing the consistencies that Dr. B points out, looking at Eliot's individual works as parts of a larger project, to emphasizing the differences among his individual works.

The view of humanity Eliot presents in "The Wasteland" re-appears periodically in "FQ." In the third section of "Burnt Norton," the speaker describes "strained time-ridden faces. . . / Filled with fancies and empty of meaning." Such faces belong to "Men" who possess "unwholesome lungs" and "unhealthy souls" and who are blown about by wind, "that sweeps the gloomy hills of London," as bits of paper. Such a characterization continues throughout the text, as in the second section of "Little Gidding," where descriptions of the painful realization of "human folly" and your own deeds "ill done" appear.

Additionally, the same distaste for modernity that pervades "WL" is echoed throughout "FQ." The passage Dr. B mentions-- musings about the river being a "strong brown god" is directly followed by the river being "almost forgotten . . . By worshippers of the machine."

Rather than such descriptions functioning as the focus of the text (as is the case with "WL"), Eliot presents them more as illustrations of why our existence is so transitory and of why we are nearly incapable of coping with such a realization. (I think the calmness with which Eliot presents this state of affairs is perhaps the reason some characterize "FQ" as so different than "WL"; additionally, such descriptions read more like forgiving acknowledgments than indictments-- I'm thinking of the last section of "The Dry Salvages": we "are only undefeated/ Because we have gone on trying.") Indeed, Eliot seems much more concerned with (maybe even impressed by?) the state of nature rather than of humanity, as the former functions comfortably (and almost "knowingly") in perpetual transience. I'm thinking of Eliot's frequent allusions to seasons changing and also (perhaps more importantly) of Nature's way of marking (?) time. The "tolling bell" (introduced in the first section of "The Dry") that "Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried/ Ground swell" is a particularly striking image.

This recurring theme of our transient existence, however, was none too comforting to me this weekend-- as I was reading "FQ," I was being herded on and off of 10 row airplanes (not even four  seats per row) that had faulty engines, malfunctioning steering equipment, etc. For one who needs medication to fly on a plane that is in good shape, these circumstances were a less than ideal combination with Eliot. As I felt my certain death approaching, I got hung up on Eliot's pattern of fire imagery (probably due to the fact that I read Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" last week). So that I was reading Eliot's phrases, such as "destructive fire," "frigid purgatorial fires," "To be redeemed from fire by fire," "crowned knot of fire," in rather apocalyptic ways, though I acknowledge my personal anxiety coupled with my reading list of late colored this reading-- any thoughts?

Lastly, I think Eliot continues to be quite relevant, but I'm not sure I can back this up with anything particularly scholarly sounding. It probably goes without saying that many of the issues modernists, including Eliot, were grappling with continue to haunt our postmodern era. As much as I love "WL" and as many similarities as I see between it and "FQ," the latter seems quite a bit more balanced (refreshing?) than the former. I suppose what I mean by "balanced" is realistic, or an acknowledgment/portrayal of complexity that I think "WL" in some ways lacks (i.e. "FQ" doesn't make me want to open a vein like "WL" does). We could use a bit more "balance." Thus, I for one am willing to overlook any conservatism in Eliot in favor of the more synthetic view he provides.

TIME, GODS, ASCENSION: ELIOT LEAVES THE WORLD

Regarding T.S. Eliot, I'm assuming that we agree on one point, that Eliot essentially wrote a single poem, a very long and evolving poem, that began with "Prufrock" and concluded with Four Quartets. Another way of making the same point:  Eliot had his subject matters, and they were presented and developed in an orderly fashion, and as a result, Eliot's poetic career is imminently "readable," patently interpretable.  It's as if he set himself a group of problems to explore as a young man, devoted his mid-career to exploring them, and having drawn satisfactory conclusions regarding these problems by 1942, when "Burnt Norton" was published and when Eliot still had nearly a quarter-century to live, he ceased writing poetry.  Problem solved.  Case closed.  Poems done.

I've always admired that about him, the way he used poetry to define and complete a task, and I think it's a defining quality of a superior mind.  Eliot never wrote out of habit, it seems to me, nor did he write because he was in a lyrical mood and wished to give vent to his lyricism.  No, Eliot wrote to solve solvable problems, and so the end of poetry was in sight for him as soon as he wrote his first line.

Eliot's defining problems are gathered together in Four Quartets, as if for a final assault.  It's a mighty poem, in my estimation, because it records the struggle required to achieve real clarity on a number of difficult issues.  Eliot is interested in the Christian notion of time, how it fuses time past, present, and future, at the moment of the incarnation, and how, properly conceived, "all time is eternally present," as he says, which is to say, every instant of our lives, again, properly conceived, is a moment of the incarnation. 

Except of course that Eliot was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy, particularly by the Indian practice of figuring forth psychological states as visualized deities:  "I don't know much about gods," Eliot writes, "but I think the river / Is a strong brown god."  Eliot learned from Indian philosophy a kind of lyrical dialecticism, a way of representing poetically the idea that it's difficult to speak of eternity without understanding, implying, and finally accepting the temporal in our lives, the ebb and flow over which we have no control.  To resolve this issue, Eliot ultimately returned to Christianity, a much worked-over Christianity, and found solace, as I read him, in a kind of salvation as figured forth in Christ's life.  Eliot's Christianity in some senses is a conservative Christianity, but in others highly synthetic and unorthodox.

Which leads us to the questions that we might discuss in class.  To what degree do we find Eliot's religious resolutions to be suitable to the contemporary world?  As you probably know, Eliot's stock has dropped somewhat since the heyday of the 40s and 50s.  But I wonder why it has dropped, precisely.  Of course he's conservative politically and artistically, and we tend to fancy ourselves very liberal.  But I think there's more to it than that. 

Eliot has a very distinct vision of art and its purpose, which is, to my eye, visible in his poetry from time to time.  How would you characterize it?  How does it structure his verse?  What are its social implications?  And how does Four Quartets that vision?  What are the poem's essential subjects, and do they engage us today?  Why or why not?  The back cover of my edition has Stephen Spender proclaiming the arrival of "ideas" in Eliot's verse, and what a bracing and much-needed innovation that is.  Agree?  Disagree?

How would you assess Eliot's accomplishment?