Strand, Satan & Stevens

I go into reading Mark Strand's poetry optimistically. I am rooting for him. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps it is his smiling face peering back at me from the book jacket, apparently happy and perhaps jovial. I do not find what I expect. Circularity, gloom, flux, and inevitability are waiting for my arrival. I greet them in The Dance.

I could pull some fantastic BS out of this poem. One example is that he is talking about the fall of Lucifer. In the first stanza he is the shining light of line two; an archangel in heaven. In line three of the second stanza we witness the result of his rebellion in heaven: "The light falls like an anchor..." The third stanza shows his new home in Hell, the "burning house" of line 12. Of course the chances of this explication being an accurate representation of Strand's thoughts while composing this piece are slight. I did it for fun and to show that one has to address the entire poem when theorizing about its meaning. Although I'm liking the biblical idea more as I reread this.

The Dance is a great example of how Strand might deceive the reader into thinking that maybe this will be the poem that doesn't end in the dark or with death. That last line about being borne into Heaven is uplifting, right? Not so much. Keep in mind that it has been preceded by the first two stanzas ending with "one foot in the grave" and "being pulled down constantly." He is not be optimistic in the final line, but saying that although we may pull ourselves up out of death and despair, we'll end up right back there eventually. This refers back to the idea of circuity in Strand's poems. If he had said borne again in stead of "again and again," I might believe he was speaking of redemption or ascending to Heaven after death. By repeating that word though, he assures the reader that the cycle of falling will continue.

Also typical in much of his work is the change in perspective of the poet, the flux, if you will, from one sense of being to another. Here the poet sees himself from out of body then experiences such a transition when "Slowly I dance out of the burning house of my head."

I, for one, am thrilled at the disappointment regarding my baseless expectations of Mark Strand. Happy-go-lucky poetry doesn't suit me the way decent parenting doesn't suit Dina Lohan. I love that he manages to communicate his unsettling strangeness through clear and coherent language. He is at once accessible and aloof. Thank goodness that he wasn't such a good painter, and that he happened upon "The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens" during his years before writing.

Ashbery's Building of Poetry

John Ashbery's poetry takes me just out of my comfort zone for explication. Not because his poetry is beyond my comprehension, but because it is not immediately accessible. With almost every other poet I've encountered, in any given piece there is something to latch onto that starts me on the path to (my own) understanding. I'm finding it difficult to locate that "in" in much of Ashbery's work. I'm taking this as a learning opportunity and will try to burrow into "These Lacustrine Cities," which I chose simply because I did not know what lacustrine meant. I know what it means now, and it really doesn't help. Here's my best educated attempt at getting to the heart of this poem.
He is comparing the building of a city to the creation of a poem, and the role of man (citizen of the city) with the role of poet. In both contexts, the individual must set aside all personal hopes and desires and focus all his energy on what is necessary for the good of the city/poem. Once the city/poem is complete, time and history will forever change it. This he tells us in stanza two where he says:

"...into the past for swans and tapering branches, burning

until all that hate was transformed into useless love."

The city/poem takes on a life of its own and the creator is left with nothing but himself, and all the personal desire that he set aside for the sake of his work returns with nowhere to go. This, Ashbery describes in the third stanza.

"Then you are left with an idea of yourself

and the feeling of ascending emptiness..."

Indeed, when the poem is finished and history (or the reader) has had it's way with it, only a memory is left; or in the case of a city, a monument is constructed. Even thought the city still exists, we only pay attention to the monument, to the more manageable representation of the city. Similarly, the finished poem is stripped of it's singular enormity, and banished perhaps to an anthology or other collection. Through this banishment (lines 16-20), the poet now gets caught up in time as his creation did. He is rendered incapable of anything other than "nursing some private project." The private project is almost certainly the next poem he is composing. The last stanza describes how, for the poet, every poem is akin to the rise and fall of a civilization; a monumental achievement that he knows will one day be relegated to a footnote in history.

"You have built a mountain of something,

Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument,

Whose wind is desire starching a petal,

Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears."

For John Ashbery, the act of creating and finishing a poem is like turning a mountain into a mole-hill. A thought not dissimilar to some of his fellow modernists and post-modernists. It's too bad that they aren't able to see the universal transcendence to their private monuments.

Sexton vs. Plath vs. Labels

To lump Anne Sexton with the "confessional" poets is a disservice. Simply because she studied with Robert Lowell (who's book Life Studies was the first to be dubbed as confessional) and Sylvia Plath does not make it so. Since Plath was certainly confessional, I think the fact that they were friends and contemporary peers, and both died at their own hand, forces the label on Sexton as well. I think the difference between Plath and Sexton is this:
Plath conveys the disillusionment, horror, highs and lows of her life through her poetry as a means of release. All the doubt and anxiety she felt became, for a time at least, not hers as she transferred it to the page. Then it was ours. Unfortunately, the well from which these feelings sprung ran deep, and she could never expunge fast enough. Her work was more nakedly autobiographical than Sexton's. Confessional is an appropriate label for her.
Sexton, through her personal narrative was examining the horror in society, in particular relationships and intimacy. She wasn't so much exposing her soul to us as she was letting the dark and uncomfortable of the world filter through her soul. Sexton craved the spotlight. She was only completely comfortable when she was "on," reading her poetry. A confession is a deeply personal thing, and one who is making it does not draw attention to herself. I know that Plath submitted poems from an early age and was published often, but she still kept herself at arms length from the spotlight.
I sense that writing poetry for Plath was like cutting herself open and bleeding words on to paper. I see Sexton as a black hole who sucks everything around her into herself and then spits poetry out the other end.

Deep and Dark "puddle-wonderful"

Cummings is a great poet to spend some time with in a modern poetry class. Although his work does not demonstrate or command the authority in voice of a Stevens or Whitman, there is much to be learned (and un-learned) from this quiet genius. Most important is to get past the apparent quirkiness of the design of his poems. Yes, he misuses or abandons punctuation; yes he breaks lines and words non-traditionally and spreads them all over the page. But to focus on this aspect of his work is dismissive of his love of form (see one of his sonnets such as "["next to of course god america i]"), his dark satire, and all of his strong personal and political beliefs. Because we are traditionally exposed to few or one of his poems in high school (almost certainly "[in Just-]"), Cummings too often is glossed over as a one-trick-pony, flash in the pan who wrote that wonderfully fun poem about spring.
By beginning, at this level, with a more adult explication of "[in Just-]," we emerge from the world of the sinister balloonman shaken. We are forced to look deeper into Cummings' playground, to see what might be lurking behind the parentheses.
I wished to look at a poem I had not read before, and I found "[Buffalo Bill 's] to be quite interesting. Right away the reader is put off by the use of the word "defunct" in line 2. The subject is not exactly dead, he instead has stopped functioning, as if he were a programmed, automated entertainment machine rather than a person. Immediately we are told that this elegy (if that is even what it will be) is not exactly going to mourn or praise the deceased. Indeed the poem evolves into a satirical account of Buffalo Bill's progression from army hero to side-show act, ending with Cummings' ultimate statement of contempt in line 10:

"how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death"

A common device in Cummings' poetry is the use of childlike voice and perspective. He employs that here to show the change in perspective that he perhaps has experienced toward Buffalo Bill. The combining of nine words into one in line 5 emulates the rapid, overexcited speech a of a young man in adoration of his idol. Yet his sarcastic address to death is pure angry adult. In order to grow up, he has had to tear down his idol. Looking at Cummings' full body of work, I find that the prevalence of satire and black comedy reminds me a great deal of America's greatest satirist, Kurt Vonnegut.

Definitely Not A River of Dreams

"The Bitter River" is as important to society as Hughes' more popular "Dream Deferred" poems. Here he eloquently uses the metaphor of the bitter, muddy river to channel his continuing outrage and weariness with the continued racial and social injustice in the South. Written when he was 40, this is perhaps a follow up to his earlier "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," written when he was just 17. The river has changed from one that can "turn all golden in the sunset," (Speaks. Line 8), to one that reflects "no stars by night, no sun by day," (Bitter. Line 23-24). It is immediately apparent that the optimism of his youth has been eroded by the river of oppression, ironically grown stronger since the abolishment of slavery.
With it's dedication to two young black boys who were lynched, Hughes is obviously addressing racial injustice in its overt, physical, violent form. The poem is enclosed by the reference to this violence in the dedication and the last stanza. Hidden within the violence, Hughes is lamenting about the more subtle social injustice he is seeing. He uncovers it in many places. He tells us in lines 16-20 that although blacks might be allowed an education, it is useless as it will never get to be put to use. Although they may be trained in certain vocations, the training is moot as nobody will hire them.
The third stanza is really the heart of this piece. With their false promises of better days through patience, hard work, and education (lines 38-43), the wealthy, white ruling class is merely patronizing blacks. Hughes knows this, but when he speaks out, he is labeled "Disruptor! Agitator! Troublemaker!" By pointing out the social injustice, he runs the risk of becoming a victim of the violence of racial hatred. He ends the stanza with a wholly depressing thought. Because blacks have been allowed certain liberties and freedoms, they have once again become bound to the rules and suppression that whites have imposed on them. Instead of being slaves in a physical sense, they are socially enslaved. If they question their "freedom" they are considered ungrateful troublemakers.
In the fourth stanza, by repeating over and over how tired he is: of dreams broken, of hopes dashed, of imprisonment, of patronization, of segregation, of being poor; he paints a picture of a man (and a race) that feels utterly defeated. The tragedy is that Hughes offers no hope of redemption or change within this work. One cannot but be moved by the despair in those last two lines, again repeating tired, tired. He is a broken man who has lost the one last thing that a human has to cling to when everything else in the world has been taken from him: hope.