Jan
19
I’ve Opted for a Heart This Mid-November Morn (from Big Bridge)
Amy King
How to find ivory’s antecedent among these drifts of snow,
restore the clover to its buried frozen form?
And what about
the girl with loneliness, her lush medium dressed in birds?
Inside the dress embraces a range of mercurial gazes,
an advanced degree in gleaning eyes
from the wrist that turns the curves into contagious angles.
It is hard not to die, and yet here, the singer and sewer, one,
stitch a voice into the actual road. We ambulate each alone,
pressing stuffed figures to our chests, wailing silence
for a warmer bosom feathered, opposite our own.
Comment:
“Ivory’s antecedent” suggests a purity, a whiteness, so powerful it is generative (“restore the clover to its buried frozen form”). Of course, what is generated isn’t quite the same as the clover we see everyday: our speaker is hurting, and thus knows what she wants and knows she doesn’t really want it and perhaps doesn’t know what she wants. Luck that would never change isn’t really luck, but we think consistency alone will end pain.
“Her lush medium” is ambiguous. It could mean that others see “the girl with loneliness” through something “dressed in birds,” or that she sees the entirety of the world “dressed in birds.” If we assume both viewers and the viewed are confined to the “lush medium,” the question that opened this poem has been restated: purity looks to us like “drifts of snow,” it is not clear we could recognize it if we encountered it directly. Coldness is identified with the “lush,” but if the problem with coldness is static/sameness, then problem with the “lush” is a bit different. Even if we’re seeing correctly, our point of view can fly away, can maintain a controlling distance.
We see the controlling distance at work in the dress itself: “mercurial gazes” turn this girl into an object. Purity may not exist, but lust doesn’t satisfy: it marks one as disposable (“gleaning;” those interested in you are fevered – “contagious”). “Degree,” “wrist,” “angles” all suggest suicide more than geometry.
And yet: the singer (“birds”) and the sewer (“dress”), while emblematic of lust and coldness, also reflect our speaker’s – the girl’s – strength. She wants purity, she can make her narrative describe what others are going through. And she doesn’t hate love, or being loved: she knows what purity is for, that flying away together isn’t wrong.
We have to start somewhere, though. No more staying still, making oneself an object inadvertently. All of us, including her, have to learn to walk alone. In doing so, we recall our childhood a new way: we’re not sleeping with teddy bears, but rather keeping a memory of what is dearest to us. That memory we know is inanimate, imperfect, and we’re not going to hold anyone to that standard strictly (“advanced degrees”). We don’t cry (“wailing silence”). We wait, even while in motion.
The difference between the adolescent and adult heart is that the existence of the adult heart depends on others: we must reach out and be reached out to. The imagination alone – both our own and others’ – is an invitation to disaster.
- Amy King, “The Always Song”
- “Ivywall of Sparrows,” Amy King
- My November Guest
- Free From Pain? On Dickinson’s "The Heart Asks Pleasure First…"
- "If I can stop one heart from breaking," Emily Dickinson
Comments
3 Responses to “Growing to Love: On Amy King’s “I’ve Opted for a Heart This Mid-November Morn””
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what a beautiful poem :)
yep
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