Finally, "Silence"

I thought I had stumbled across a poem of Marianne Moore's that was maybe less complex than the majority of her work, in "Silence." I was woefully wrong. At first glance everything about this poem is different from the anthologised material we had to digest. The jagged line breaks are missing. Although it is often hard to find, almost all of her verses utilize end rhyme. There is no discernible end rhyme here. And good luck uncovering meter in this one. So I dove right into the meaning, which again appeared to be rather straightforward and accessible.

"Superior people" know when it's time to leave, or less obviously, when to shut their mouths. They don't need to be prompted, or given constant guidance (lines 2-3). In a word (or two), they are "self reliant." A superior person's understanding will become apparent, not in silence exactly, but in "restraint," in not speaking. Moore makes sure to emphasize the difference. She ends by commenting on the quote: "Make my house your inn," saying that inns are not residences. This seemed obvious enough as an inn is somewhere one stays for a short period of time and goes on his way. It's a clever way of telling one's guest that he is welcome, but not for too long. I should have been content at that point, closed the proverbial book on this poem and made a sandwich or something. But no, I had to read it again, and damn it, now I'm hungry.

Further examination revealed what I had missed on previous readings, that only two and a half lines (15 words total) are not quoted from outside sources; in this case overheard pieces of conversation. I also didn't pay attention to the fact that there are three distinct voices speaking: the father, the daughter (who Moore has overheard), and Moore herself. Notes on the poem indicate that Moore has embellished the first quote. So not only are we hearing Moore's voice overall, as it is her poem, but embedded within the voice of the father as well. Within the "voice" of the father also is the voice of the daughter since, although Moore is quoting the father, the words she uses are those of the daughter. Confused yet? Wondering what all of these voices are actually saying? Yeah, me too. If anyone out there has some insight - please, please help!

Here's the best I can do with "Silence." Dad realized early on the genius of his daughter, be it Moore, or the overheard woman, I don't care, I have a headache now. So he is reminding the girl, in a way that a "superior person" would appreciate, that children (especially female children) should be seen and not heard. It was merely a way for him to maintain control of his home and retain his intellectual authority. This is why silence becomes restraint in line 12. Possibly, the "self reliance" from line five foreshadows "Make my house your inn." He's not so subtly telling his daughter to shut up and move on, literally and figuratively.

I'm getting some snacks . . . and an aspirin.

A Cold Frost?

Robert Frost was not a personable man. We know this from biography, and it radiates from his poems. The grade school image of the nature loving, road less traveling poet that we have all been force fed gets turned inside out upon a mature examination of his work. This is a good thing. It makes Frost a rounded human being. It makes us re-read and re-think. We get to see his dark side, which has been lurking in many of his poems; right under our birch swinging, apple picking, woods stopping noses. Once we as readers are finally tuned in to this aspect of Frost's work however, we run the risk of seeking it everywhere, in every poem. Sometimes we are so focused on feeling our way through the dark room of the poem, that we don't see the sunlight blazing through the open window. I think "Out, Out--" is one of those poems that we want to be dark, when in reality it is, well just reality.

Certainly, this isn't a happy poem. While cutting wood with a buzz-saw, a boy accidentally cuts his hand off, and then dies as a result of his injury. Downbeat? Yes. Dark? I think not. One must keep in mind certain facts when reading this poem

1. This was a farm in the early 1900s. Every person in the family worked the farm. Their entire existence depended on the farm. If it didn't continue to run successfully, they didn't eat, let alone pay bills.
2. Frost titles this poem in reference to a passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's Act V Scene V, lines 17-28. I'm not quoting it, and shame on you if you don't have a copy of Shakespeare's complete works in your collection. I will paraphrase though. Life is short, full of fuss and turmoil, and ultimately meaningless.

Now that we are caught up, we can tackle the last two lines of this poem. A lot of readers are offended at how callous the family of this boy are. How can they just go back to work after such a tragedy? Because they have to. Because if they shut their lives down and spend a day, two days, a week grieving, then the farm suffers and they jeopardize their existence. They are now short one person, and his work has to be absorbed by the other members of the family.

I will go as far as saying that the boy let himself die. He did not cut his own hand off. He technically did not commit suicide. Once he knew his hand was gone; once "He saw all spoiled" (line25), he knew he was of no value to the farm any more. So he mentally and physically stopped fighting against his injury - he allowed himself to die so that he would not be a burden to the operation; he would not be a non-contributing mouth to feed. I see the boy as a self-sacrificing hero.

I love the impersonal nature of this poem. The boy, the sister, the doctor, the watcher, "those that lifted eyes" (line 4), and "they" (the family) are never assigned names. The most personified thing in the poem is the buzz-saw with its snarling and rattling. Upon hearing that supper was ready the saw was also hungry, and it was not shy about what it wanted to eat.

Back to our Shakespeare reference: the boy represents the brevity of life, "brief candle." The saw represents the "sound and fury." His death was meaningless, "signifying nothing."

13 Isn't Always Bad Luck

Certainly my favorite Stevens poem, and one of my favorites of the modern era, is "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." What initially drew me to this poem, aside from the 14 brilliant pictures it paints (one per stanza + one overall), was the fact that I could not duplicate it. No matter what the subject, I would always end up describing it, which is not at all what Stevens has done with his blackbird. Instead of a meditation on truth and perspective, I'd invariably end up with 13 lame to semi-lame descriptions of _____. I still try now and then. And, though I'll never fool myself into thinking I could put on paper anything close to the genius of Wallace Stevens, I'd like to believe that a more mature perspective and a deeper understanding of the poet and poem, would bridge the gap somewhat between my knock off and his original.
In spite of the title, this poem is not so much about a blackbird as it is about everything in relation to the blackbird. In each stanza, the bird is the focus upon which each reader perceives the given landscape. Since each reader will perceive and subsequently define each scene (stanza) differently, there are not just 13, but an infinite number of unique perceptions. Since each interpretation is true to each reader, there are an infinite number of truths. If we remember "The Snow Man," the implication would be that there is no real truth because every individual perspective is true. Somehow I equate this with the man who has "a mind of winter" and eventually becomes one with winter. Once he is no longer perceiving the winter scene, but belongs to it, it must cease to exist. Does that make any sense? It's quite hard to articulate properly.
On a less brain crunching note, I enjoy the flow of the poem. Not rhythmically, as any consistent rhyme or meter doesn't appear here. The poem moves well as we encounter the blackbird on its journey between the bookends of stanzas I and XIII. Although this is a "cold" poem throughout, only these two stanzas mention snow: "among twenty snowy mountains," (I) and "it was snowing and it was going to snow," (XIII). Also, these are the only scenes in which the blackbird is truly still. In stanzas III, VI, IX, X, XI, and XII it is flying or, in the case of XI, the suggestion of flight. In VII it is walking; and in V it is whistling. Stanzas II, IV, and VIII are like rest stops along the way. While technically there is no movement by the blackbird, these are like glimpses into the mind of the creator, and are different from the remaining stanzas.
I think V is the most telling section of this poem. I think this stanza conveys one of Stevens' philosophies, the distinction between what is heard and the implications of what the sound becomes after it is heard, "the blackbird whistling, or just after." When applied to poetry, I believe Stevens was fascinated with the transformation his words took from being put on the page to being taken in by the reader. Any poem is forever altered once it is encountered by even one reader. Maybe Stevens could never decide which he preferred, the act of creation or the echo of his creation in the minds of the reader.
One last thing! Of course I have to add my pop culture reference. In 1998, Pearl Jam released the album Yield, which contains a song called "Low Light," written by bassist Jeff Ament. When I heard this song, stanza XIII from "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" came immediately to mind, even though the last time I read it was about four years earlier in college. To me this song (musically more than lyrically) captured the mood of stanza XIII. Check it out and see if you agree or not.

Is Morrissey Today's Prufrock?

I relate almost everything I encounter in my reading to music or movies. This is in no way forced. All my life my retention for song lyrics and movie dialogue has been uncanny; which is remarkable considering the volume of each I have digested over the years. (Yet somehow I can't remember phone numbers I use pretty regularly without looking them up.) When reading a poem, for example, at some point a lyric or a scene pops into my head that I associate with the overall theme, or with the events of a specific portion of the work. This was the case with Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
I'm specifically referring to the four stanzas that run from line 37 to line 69. Unitl this point, Prufrock has been on his way to a tea, and is using his description of the city to describe himself and his feelings toward the event to which he is going. "Etherised" (line 3) means numb and detached. "Certain" (line 4), "muttering" (line 5), "restless" and "cheap" (line 6), "tedious" (line 8), and "overwhelming" (line 10) are all straightforward in their meaning. Taken as a group, these words paint a picture of an anxious, confused, and when placed in the larger context of the city, disillusioned man.
The stanza contained in lines 37-48 has Prufrock hesitating to enter the tea, wondering "Do I dare?" (line 38). He is either truely self-conscious and worried about what the women will think of him, or he is using that as a possible excuse to bail out. It's important that he asks "Do I dare Disturb the universe?" (lines 46-47), as this tells us how small and insignificant he feels in relation to the women and the tea.
We learn in the following stanza (lines 49-54) that he has in fact been to many such teas before. That he has in fact "measured out [his] life with coffee spoons" (line 51). In the next two stanzas Prufrock admits that he is also very familiar with these women. I think he means not the specific women that are at this tea, but the type of woman one would typically encounter at such an event. If it was the same group of women over and over, I don't think he would feel like an insect being examined as he describes in line 57, "formulated, sprawling on a pin." He doesn't know how to approach or speak to a woman when he feels this way. He continually asks himself "how should I presume?"
At this point a lyric from a song by the Smiths exploded into my head, that to me, encapsulates this entire portion of the poem:

"There's a club, if you'd like to go

You could meet somebody who really loves you

So you go, and you stand on your own

And you leave on your own

And you go home, and you cry

And you want to die."

This is from the song "How Soon is Now?" written in 1984 by Morrissey (lyric) and Johnny Marr (music) of The Smiths.
From here, other apparent similarities between the song and the poem come to light. Prufrock continues his mental debate on whether or not he should dare to speak (line 80). He never summons the courage and laments in line 84, "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker." This sentiment is echoed by Morrissey in the subsequent lyric:

"See I've already waited too long

And all my hope is gone."

Neither Prufrock nor Morrissey's unnamed protagonist is able to overcome his shyness and lack of self-worth. Prufrock, after leaving the tea, through his continued inner monologue, tries to justify his lack of action by questioning if it would have been worth it to engage that world and those women. This starts on line 87 with "And would it have been worth it after all," and continues through the break at line 110. Here he appropriately compares himself to the most famous man of non-action in literary history, Hamlet. He claims he's not like Hamlet, and lists all the things that he (thinks he) is to proove it to himself (lines 112-119). Prufrock is right, he's not like Hamlet; but not for the reason he thinks. Hamlet finally did something. Prufrock never manages to escape from his own head.
I would love to be able to say that Morrissey had this poem in mind as he wrote "How Soon is Now?" and it is possible, as he is very well read. In fact he references a line from a different Eliot in the same song. The opening verse stems from a line in George Eliot's Middlemarch: "to be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular." (Thanks to Simon Goddard and his great 2004 book The Smiths - Songs That Saved Your Life for that information.) Alas, I will always have the pleasure of linking one of the greatest poems of American letters with one of the greatest songs and the most intriguing and offbeat wordsmiths of my genreration.

Can One Draw a Poem?

I know we're not supposed to address poems that were discussed in class, but hey, I'm a rebel. This is relating to the E. A. Robinson poem "Miniver Cheevy." I was immediately drawn to the oddity of the short (five syllable) final line of each quatrain. Then it occured to me that as a result of this, I was able to assign shape to this poem. If I put the book down and look at it from a slight distance, each stanza looks like a funnel. On top of that, if I read the poem aloud, rhythmically each stanza sounds like a funnel. Now comes the coolest part! As I read the poem, the content follows the funnel pattern too. The events or thoughts of each quatrain dwindle to an abrupt end and filter into the next, where a tangent or temporally successive thought begins. For example, stanza two describes his nostalgia for the "days of old" and how thoughts of knights with swords on horses would "set him dancing." The next stanza picks up with that thought turned into saddness because it is not reality for him. The stanza ends with Miniver Cheevy now dreaming of ancient Greece and Camelot. This channels into the next stanza where he mourns the loss of courtly romance and chivalry that were representative of the times and places he was just dreaming of.
Or, It could all just be visual and auditory halucinations from the fever that's currently cooking my brain. I guess time will tell.