StormHaven

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