What is so great about this poem is the beautiful thought rendered through indelible imagery. The owl descends, “like an angel, or a Buddha with wings” then alights “like a little lighthouse.” But it is this thought of light, consuming light–”scalding, aortal light”–that, paired with the fierceness of the predator, the white-on-white landscape she has painted, haunts us with the notion that in it we are “washed and washed / out of our bones.” The visceral fierceness of the language, and the pairing of the impartial act of predator to the impartial act of death, rendered through such strong–and such cohesive!–imagery leaves a lasting impression in our minds.

What is so great about this poet is how her keen observation of nature leads to transcendence. Here, and in so many poems, she seems to get inside the natural act through her deep meditation upon the subject, and from here she is often led to a kind of universal truth. Because it is borne out of such artistic integrity, this is not prosaic, sing-song truth to be printed on a greeting card. It is the visceral, stark, abundant or spare truth of the real natural world which she replants us firmly and gratefully within.

N.B.: I am ending the MondayPoem series for now. My first intention with this series was to bring poetry to people who do not otherwise feel they “get it.” On that point of the experiment I have had few comments to encourage this pursuit. Also, I wanted to use this as a means to engage with and explore my favorite poems. But I am doing this already, without an enforced frequency (i.e. weekly), and enjoying writing about new discoveries most. Finally, perhaps most importantly, I feel that to give proper critical treatment to these works I love would require much more space and a more formal tone than I want to take on this blog. Yet skimming the surface, I find myself starting to repeat myself about certain concepts and themes. So, it was an interesting experiment, and one I enjoyed–but for now I am putting it to rest

What is so great about this poem is that it takes five ordinary nouns: coffee, crumb, balcony, sun, and river; and one abstract one: miracle–and weaves them in to a clever, strange sestina.
The poem pulls off the use of such ordinary words by thinking about them in interesting ways–such as loaves, “buttered, by a miracle”, the question, “what under the sun”, and, “my crumb / my mansion.” The strangeness here works well, making it seem as if it were not imposed by the form.

Likewise, focusing on unique imagery:

One foot of the sun /
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

helps to draw attention away from the devices necessarily imposed by the form–refocusing instead on compelling lyricism.

What is so great about this poet is that, as well as being brilliantly adept at blank verse, she helped revive forms like the sestina in modern poetry, breathing new intelligence and insight to the constraints of formal poems, inspiring generations of writers to come to consider what prescribed forms can offer in modern poems.

What is so great about this poem is the way that it carries you along with strong, simple words and imagery, whisking you past moments of highly ambiguous meaning, delighting the senses. Having blasted our way through many of these moments with an almost nursery-rhyme use of rhythm and alliteration, we come to this spectacular moment:

When the stars threw down their spears, /
And watered heaven with their tears

On the first day of my junior seminar in poetry with Stephen Booth at UC Berkeley, we read this poem. Then Professor Booth asked if there were any questions or comments on the poem. I rose my hand timidly, and said that while these two lines were my favorite part of the poem, the truth is that I did not understand their literal meaning. He proceeded, rather than chastening me, to expand upon the significance of this conclusion that I had come to: that one can find profound enjoyment in something not totally literally understood. He asked me if I understood why I did not understand. When I said no, he replied, “well, then I may still have something left to teach you.”

For the remainder of the lecture, he pointed out the various turns of precious nonsense in this poem, starting with these two lines. Are the stars throwing down their spears in an act of war or defeat? With what arms do stars throw? Are the stars below heaven? Or the other way around? The lines don’t quite literally make sense–they are, in fact, the best kind of poetically strange.

Likewise the various references to arms, hands, and even wings are ambiguous and strange–as they can seem to be referring to either the tiger or the god creating the tiger. So many small ambiguities get immediately glossed over as we are carried along by the force, the tom-tom rhythm, and the great assertive conviction of the poet’s voice. I can see why Professor Booth chose this poem to illustrate his point. Little did I know that in risking the embarrassment of being brutally honest about what I did and did not understand, I would become an integral part of that point.

The poem remains a brilliant work. So brilliant, in fact, its essential, primal nature seems to resonate well even with children. It was the first poem I tried to teach to my then neighbor’s seven year old son. We loved to read it aloud.

What is so great about this poet is his prolific outpouring of prophetic works that are as artistically sound as they are visionary. His interpretations of biblical themes are as significant as Milton. His lines and images–in poetry as well as engraving–are nothing short of brilliant.

What is so great about this poem is the way it feels in your mouth when read aloud (try it!) and the way it delights the senses–all the while evading much in the way of prosaic meaning. Yet despite its lack of solid, linear, non-symbolic meaning, the poem is profoundly assertive. Rather than examine the lush (concupiscent, perhaps?) language elements of this poem, I would like to take a moment to talk about the line breaks, and how the few artificially broken lines in the poem serve to strengthen the simultaneous sense of certainty and delight.

The first is:

The muscular one, and bid him whip /
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

These lines, and the one above it, are part of a command, which is necessarily declamatory. While most of the breaks in this poem fall on caesuras–like commas and periods–this more deliberate break has a deliberate effect: suspense. What will the muscular roller of big cigars whip? Apparently nothing more brutal or kinky than the makings of ice cream. But momentarily, our mind gets pushed out on that ledge.

Rather than create ambiguity, line breaks can also serve to reinforce a (false) sense of certainty about objects the poet refers to:

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress /
As they are used to wear …

Take from the dresser of deal, /
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet /
On which …

here “such dress” and “that sheet” combined with, again, the structure of a command, gives us an artificial sense that we know what the speaker is talking about. You know–that sheet. And yet, we do not. “Such” could mean “so much” as well as “that type of”–both meanings that somehow imply we know what the speaker is talking about already. This device–of declaiming in such a way as to imply the reader is inside the experience–can be a very powerful way to create certainty and ambiguity at the same time. The result is pleasure, and a more interesting poem. The line breaks serve to reinforce this, by giving great weight to the objects themselves.

Other lines build certainty through the classic device of rhyme:

If her horny feet protrude, they come /
To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Ultimately, the poem works to bring a tremendous amount of energy of declamation, certainty, perhaps even pomp and circumstance–to a collection of images and ideas that are not logically sound. The simultaneous self-assurance of the speakers voice, reinforced by line breaks and other devices, combined with the tremendous amount of strangeness in this poem, makes it a highly energetic and impactful work.

What is so great about this poet is his ability to bring tremendous strangeness and tremendous certainty together in many of his works. Ultimately, Stevens seems to have studied, understood, and reproduced a great deal of art that does not necessarily have great prosaic meaning. Yet it does mean something to the poetic mind, where it works and dwells and delights–time and again, read after read.

What is so great about this poet is that he demonstrates masterful observation and insight in to the poetic musicality of mundane subjects. What is so great about this poem is that it is an excellent demonstration of Fairchild’s gift–usually applied to blue collar work–in this case applied to basketball.

Fairchild chooses moments from the language of basketball: “pick and roll”, “fake and drive” as well as shows precise details about the “old men” from the VFW that in themselves give insight into their character without having to explain much: “army fatigues”, “house shoes”, memories of drive-in theaters. This is one of the great paradoxes of art: that specificity creates universality.

This holds true, for example, in drawing, where a precise study of what is renders the most realistic result–we train the eye to see and sketch, rather than to simply produce symbols of things (a sun in the corner, a stick man, a tree with a balloon of foliage). Likewise, Fairchild’s poetic “eye” in this poem demonstrates the ability to pick out highly poetic moments and express them through detail.

Fairchild also demonstrates an excellent understanding of timing, and capitalizes well on the momentum that builds in this poem. One of the most poetic moments in the poem comes toward the end:

A glass wand /
of autumn light breaks over the backboard.

This line plays on numerous simultaneous associations in our mind, pleasing us and adding energy to the poem: glass breaking, backboards breaking, “light breaks”–a common phrase in so many other poems, as is “autumn light”–so many meanings are rolled in to this ending, it builds energy. Thanks to this energy, the opportunity opens up for a moment of magical realism:

Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout / at their backs.

Here the detailed realism of the poem finds itself confronted with fantasy, as wings sprout like angels or gods, representing the lift of youthfulness as well as the act of going up for the basket when taking a shot.

Then final line can then continue with a complete suspension of time, just as in a fantasy of the glamorous basketball player self–the suspended animation of glory, the “time standing still” effect finally beautifully unleashed, capturing the essential power of the timeless youthful spirit in these old men: “The ball turns in the darkening air.”

This is a remarkable poem, one which transcends ordinary circumstances through keen, keen observation and brilliant poetic language and timing. The entire book, The Art Of The Lathe is like this: strong poem after strong poem–precise, brilliant, transcending–making Fairchild one of my heroes.

What is so great about this poem is its excellent rhythm. Some of this is created through alliteration, as in the lines:

They drift about the darkening city squares
[...]
fingers feeling / familiar holes
[...]
a half-contented ghost among my guest

She captures not only a flavor of shell-shocked London, but a kind of universal alienation. And she does it through a quiet, powerful voice that carries us along with its rhythms. More even than the delight of the forward thrust of alliteration, the carefully stopped lines also emphasize where words fall in their cadence. Furthermore, the ideas she momentarily dangles at the end of a line before expanding them out, like

[...] thinking: Life
has always been a counterfeit, a dream

The word Life (capitals in original) blossoms out with possibility, a kind of burst of energy at the end of a momentous downward-drifting rhythm that is instantly reframed as not hopeful, but fake–life is a “counterfeit, a dream.”

Yet the poem ends in hopefulness, ringing with an image of connectedness reflected in:

letting a tap run and the plates lie wet,
while the bright rain softly shines upon the slates,
they feel the whole of life is theirs, their music
“colour, warmth, and light:” [...]

It is a poem of reconciliation with the world, of deciding to, “take root in life, inherit love.” Fueled by keen observation of her outer and inner world, as well as rick rhythms and some sparkling images, this early work of Levertov remains, to me, a gem.

What is so great about this poet is her prolific authenticity. She had something like twenty volumes of poetry published, since shortly after the second world war through the end of the twentieth century. Her work rings with sincerity and the love of craft. Excellent rhythms, masterful line breaks–Levertov helped pioneer the free verse poem, finding in her voice and her love of words an American voice I myself can not help but find mesmeric.

What is so great about this poet is that she can really turn a compact phrase. I have heard Emily Dickinson sneeringly called, “the undergraduate’s favorite poet” and at the same time critical giants like Harold Bloom consider her one of the greatest. Whether you think her poems are clever (in the worst sense of the word) or clever (in the best sense), the first four lines of this particular poem illustrate poetic thinking at its best.

What is so great about this poem, and especially the opening, is that it is wound tight with creative energy. The meaning is fairly straightforward, but the resonance it leaves with us in just a few words is impactful. Most of the impact comes from one of the most fundamental functions poetry satisfies psychologically: to simultaneously convince us that we understand what is going on and at the same time leave some part of us feeling that we do not completely understand. In this case, the effect is rendered mostly through playing on the difference between light and heavy words.

To illustrate this point, consider the effect if the fourth line ended with “cathedral songs” instead of tunes. It’s a more boring poem. More literal. Even (perhaps especially) if we reworked it to rhyme. Why? Because the stroke of genius in the use of “tunes” is that at least one of its meaning is as a light word–meaning something between a song and a jingle. This is somewhat out of place–if we really thought about it–in a cathedral. But we do not stop to think about it. Because, besides being aided by the natural sense of “rightness” a rhyme creates, the poem has also set up a precedent for the use of words with possible “light” valences in an otherwise heavy situation.

Consider the following dissection:

light
slant
light
afternoon
tune

heavy
certain
winter
oppresses
heft
cathedral

The “light” words are slightly outnumbered and out of place. But only slightly–because they hold enough literal sense in the context of the grammar and syntax of the poem as to be passable in furthering that literal meaning. More than passable, they are interesting, because their ulterior meanings make them slightly strange.

The entire poem, in fact, is a remarkable example (as is much of Dickinson’s work) of the importance of strangeness to poetry. Good poems often say what they mean while lightly scattering ulterior motives and messages throughout the poem. Or if not messages, at least unusual or interesting relationships.

Every word has many charges to it, and so, besides sending our mind in the main direction, we find our minds rapidly stimulated by the cumulative effect of these additional meanings. The overall effect is a sense of delight, or scope, or fascination with a poem. And the best ones, read over and over, have the same electrochemical effect upon us every time.

Perhaps a little more about that next Monday.

What is so great about this poem is that it makes excellent use of the momentum of the English sonnet form, culminating in a beautiful pair of lines that simultaneously do and do not make sense:

Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at haven’s gate;

Literally, it means something like, “When the lark wakes up at dawn it sings to heaven from the earth, and this is just like what happens when I am feeling very bad about myself and then I think of you.” How, exactly, does the poet turn from the previous lines of crying, cursing, and discontent into a lark? Or is it the turn of mind itself–the act of thinking on his beloved–that is lark-like? Is it the poet, his state, or his transformation that resemble a lark? And where did this bird come from in the first place?

Fortunately, we find ourselves not troubling a bit over these details, because by the time we arrive at the end of the third quatrain, we have been swept away by a poem that takes full advantage of the meter and rhyme scheme of the sonnet to propel us toward a spectacular end.

The tension that drives us here lies between fulfilling and confounding our expectations. Wonderful, ambiguous line endings like his “bootless cries”, (which resonates with being barefoot and poor) though desiring to be, “rich in hope” (can you deposit that in a bank?), “with friends possessed” (is that really a good thing?), desiring one man’s art and another’s “scope” (range? or what? and how?)–yet each of these line endings rings with a remarkable clarity and certainty, not because they are logical but because they rhyme with the ending two lines back.

And so, we are dazzled and carried along to this wonderful, unexpected ending involving a bird who rises up from the earth (apparently that’s where they nest) and sings to heaven. In this thought the poet realizes the memory of his love for his beloved is so rich as to make him better off than a king. Yet it is not actually the beloved, but the memory–the inner experience–that brings the poet richness. Just as it is not the literal meaning, but the wonderful tension between the sense of certainty and the literal ambiguity that brings to us the full richness of this poem.

What is so great about this poet is that he makes a form as intense, compact, and exacting as the English sonnet seem effortless. Furthermore, he brings all its devices to bear to intimate something that seems meaningful, beautiful, and important to us. There is no disputing Shakespeare’s importance to poetry. Stephen Booth once remarked to our class that, “saying Shakespeare was the best poet of his age is like saying King Kong was bigger than the other monkeys.” Despite changes in the English language and literary fashion, the bard remains an enduring example of elevating art to its highest potential.

On some side notes, my wife recently introduced me to a beautiful setting of this poem by Rufus Wainwright. He manages to avoid the pitfalls of trying to set iambic pentameter into its natural rhythm–which is utterly boring–and in fact produces a simple structure that is higly effective in evoking the spirit of the poem. Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure where you can get ahold of a recording.

This sonnet also gives me some sense of link to my past. Years ago I was given a copy of Shakespeare’s works that used to belong to my great great grandfather. The volume is pristine, except for a pencil mark that circles this poem. Perhaps he too took comfort from the harsh midwest farming life of the early 20th century in thoughts of someone he loved or in the love of a poem. It is wonderful to think that a man I never met, and yet who influenced my life so greatly, may have similarly enjoyed and appreciated this poem.

I won’t attempt anything like formal criticism, in fact I think the very word has gotten a bad reputation in our world–due in part to an emphasis on one of its meanings, “negative feedback”, and also due in part to so many critics across all disciplines who have earned notoriety through negativism. Instead, I hope to give insights into why a poem works, why a poet matters, and in doing so to share my love of poetry.

Far too many people, upon hearing of my interest in poetry, have confessed that they feel they don’t “get” most poetry. I think this is a sad statement that we as poets and we as a culture have simply not tried hard enough to make poetry accessible. The road toward elitism leads to an art disconnected from the very humanity that must be at the heart of all enduring creative expression. The truth is that poems are meant to be enjoyed, savored–experienced, not understood. I can only imagine that far too many people have been shamed into believing they misunderstood a poem by some cruel and clever teacher or colleague–not unlike the scores of horrible experiences brought on by misguided piano teachers and choir masters which my wife finds herself continually working to undo in her own profession.

And so, I offer this–hopefully a small remedy to poemophobia, an open and accessible invitation into a world I do adore.