Dec
28
At the University of Dallas Rome campus at Due Santi, with Collegium Cantorum. Very lucky to have Internet, some very bad news has come my way, and I do ask for your prayers - it is a personal matter. It is awesome and gorgeous out here in the Italian countryside, the food is excellent, I’m trying to enjoy myself. I will try to get a post in tomorrow - hopefully we will be singing quite a bit today.
Thanks to Ario for introducing me to this poem: original here.
Sharks’ Teeth
Kay Ryan
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark’s-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
Comment:
“Everything contains some silence” is a proposition the speaker immediately challenges and resolves. How does “noise” contain silence? She puts this forth and argues that “rest” in the noise creates the “zest,” the very life of noise. Such rest comes in “shark-tooth shaped fragments:” each “rest” is a sudden ascent followed by a sudden descent, with an edge. In the airport and on the plane ride, while explaining this poem to two separate people, I used the image of watching live gunfire between soldiers and terrorists on television. The silence is the most awful thing, the anticipation of horror.
The speaker changes from “fragments of rest” to “remnants of a time” - “remnants” aren’t quite fragments, there may be a whole that remains after all, but it has left us. Those remnants, as well as the time itself, were/was “compact and dangerous” as a shark. There are at least two possibilities for this previous time: the meditative culture of the Middle Ages, perhaps, or a return to nature ala the “noble savage” (h/t Tony Janeiro). I’m sure we can think of more, but notice the movement of the object “compact and dangerous” - we look for the tail (end) or the fin (middle), and at parks, presumably, we are at the point of origin.
Dec
18
Towards Immortality: On Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility…” (657)
Filed Under dickinson, poetry | 5 Comments
“I dwell in Possibility…” (657)
Emily Dickinson
I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -
Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -
Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -
Comment:
“Possibility” is a “fairer House than Prose:” it cannot be the fairest of dwellings because it is possibility, after all. “The fairest” is reserved for visitors to this House, or even, given the ambiguity the dashes create, the activity she engages in: “The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise.”
The “House” is peculiar. Compared with “Prose,” we are tempted to think that it is poetry itself, with Dickinson addressing us as poet. I think that interpretation holds, but I really hate “the theme of this poem is about poetry” line of thought generally, for this reason: a clever reader can make any poem to sound like a comment on poetry. Still, Dickinson mentioned “Prose,” and that implicitly brings up the theme of poetry.
But she doesn’t talk about poetry explicitly - rather, this “House” is open to the air in two ways (”numerous of Windows,” “Gambrels of the Sky”). When you add in the mention of Cedars, you wonder if this is a House at all. Prose might actually be a House, trapping thought. The imagery here reminds one of the forest as Cathedral, only “Gambrels” is a term specific to a barn’s roof. Using that term, she’s discounted any formal religious imagery.
We wonder about the House as natural. Poetry is still a House, of sorts. That it has more Windows allows more light to come in, but also allows the occupant at any given time to see more.
The doors are “superior,” as they are “impregnable” as Cedars are: you can’t see through them. The end of Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” has the protagonist looking out at another building, and seeing in the windows what’s going on in each of the different rooms. Each thing happening in each room is starkly different from that happening in any other room. Possibility means choice - when you make a choice, other possibilities are closed to you. The difference is between the “Chambers” (within) and the “Windows” (without): one must choose how to see, and while choices are not necessarily final, one choice does mean another can not be acted on at the same time.
The problem of human vision causes our speaker to muse on what is above: “an Everlasting Roof.” There is a viewpoint which sees all.
But what’s funny about the sky is that we see it, too. The “fairest” Visitor might as well be an angel - it is the visit to possibility which makes one “fairest.” “This” is parallel with “Prose” in the first stanza: whereas Prose was a static House, the noun “occupation” strongly implies a verb, and we are given a distinct description of an action: “The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise.” “Spreading wide” implies wings, but what fascinates most is the “wide”/”narrow” duality: the Hands, by themselves, are narrow. “Spread,” they’re wide.
This is not a poem necessarily about poetry when all is said - it is a poem that uses the idea of the speaker as poet to make a point about the nature of thought. Thoughts are possibilities: each one implies a perspective. To dwell in possibility seems impossible, since to keep every thought alive all at once is impossible. Hence, “not-prose,” not merely thoughts stated as propositions, but something more social, and something ultimately mystical. A way of communicating that brings the audience to places you stood, and lets them see as you did, and lets them discover for themselves. The speaker actually is dwelling in possibility: the divine does indeed flow from the natural.
Dec
2
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” (288)
Emily Dickinson
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one’s name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
Comment:
1. There’s another edition of this poem that renders the last line of the first stanza “Don’t tell! They’d banish us - you know!” It doesn’t require a lot of thought to realize that “banish” implies “nobodies” have an exclusive club of sorts; “advertise,” when considered with the lower-case “they,” probably means the pair merely recognizing its own existence calls attention. If one doesn’t wish to read that deeply into things, one can say that “advertise” is how the exclusive club of “nobodies” “banishes.”
But I think we have to reject that easy equivocation of “banish” and “advertise,” and not just because of “they.” Dickinson has used “Nobody” and “Somebody,” purposely sounding colloquial. “Fame” is a term not absent from her poetic vocabulary:
Fame is a bee.
It has a song -
It has a sting -
Ah, too, it has a wing.
Moreover, the “Frog” stands very distinct from the “Bog” when “Somebody” is considered. “The livelong June,” that which is intensely personal, yet a season that is universal and in this case maybe eternal, again pushes me away from thinking that “Nobody” signifies an exclusive group.
Finally, there are exactly two people in the world, according to this poem, who are “Nobody” - the speaker and the audience.
2. I know. This poem looked easy a moment ago. It’s going to get a lot rougher starting now:
- Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name is “No-one” (Gk. “ou-tis,” “ou” being a negation word). This is a pun on Odysseus’ defining characteristic, “guile” (metis, “me” being a negation word although it is just coincidental here). Does wisdom and/or cleverness negate one’s identity? Reason is uncompromisingly universal, it seems.
- Aristotle tells us early on in the Ethics that honor can’t be the end of human life, because it is largely contingent on what people think of us after death. Shakespeare in the Sonnets plays around with the idea that poetry can make one immortal, as it is traditions/conventions being followed that keep memories alive, but he’s also dealing with an internal audience that has much to learn in terms of moderation.
3. Let’s go back and read this thing. The first thing that jumps out is the exclamation: this begins as a rant. The direct address of the audience in the first line seems to be in anger, but in the second line it reveals itself to be a search for company. “Too” puns all too nicely with “two.”
We’ve spent a good amount of time on “pair” and “advertise,” but not much on “tell” or “know,” which “advertise” sits between. What’s interesting is: “you tell” / “they would advertise” / “you know.” The self is divided in terms of speech and knowledge: something sits between, some sort of consideration of another. Because of this poem’s topic, that “something” is really specific: you don’t speak because you know they would advertise. In other words - they would speak your knowledge, and destroy something about its character.
“Dreary” and “public” correspond in the second stanza, and we note that “Frogs” is a play by Aristophanes, where many of the dead in Hades are represented thus, croaking away to glory. We can croak like crazy in this life if we wish, and get an “admiring Bog.” Something is special about “one’s name” that makes it not just articulate speech, but the most articulate, reasonable speech.
The quick answer to the puzzle is the Delphic oracle, atop which was written “Know thyself.” Self-knowledge presents all sorts of barriers: whether it is even possible is a pretty thorny issue. If you felt you had self-knowledge, though, to whom besides yourself would you disclose it, and why, and how? Here we get an indication of “to whom” and “how” - it would be the truest utterance of your name (”how”), and it would be shared with one you had a reasonable kinship with, perhaps meeting that one through a poem. “Why” requires an explanation of the phrase “livelong June,” and I am afraid we’re out of time for now.
Nov
26
My November Guest
Filed Under frost, personal, poetry | 3 Comments
Just contrasting moods with Frost. Robert Frost, “My November Guest:”
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
The trees are bare, but not quite withered yet. It is damp and getting darker, but there is a crispness outside that I wish to match in my work. Winter is coming methodically, working in clearly defined increments.
I’m anxious, not sorrowful.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
Anxiety doesn’t talk. She just stares at you, and once you think your mind is off her, she’s still there, staring.
In a way, she’s comforting. It feels at times like you’re loved, held to some higher standard. Even when worrying about one’s immediate security, there’s the concern of doing the best one can now, showing gratefulness for all that’s been given and will be given.
It’s not the worst thing to know someone is watching.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Anxiety takes no solace in Spring; her solace is in the certainty of decay. Fear is her motivator: maybe this desolate, faded, weighted condition can be transcended for a moment, and if so, then you’ve accomplished something. If not, all goes to rot anyway.
In this, anxiety is linked with sorrow: both deny the whole purposefully. And they think they have something to teach us.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
Those more attuned to the whole - those of us who are human - know implicitly the importance of “my sorrow,” “my anxiety.” They’re parts of a whole we’re trying to piece together. In Sorrow’s case, she should be allowed to speak: she’s only articulating what would weigh too heavily otherwise.
I think anxiety needs to be spoken to, but not badly. Anxiety may deny Spring initially, but she doesn’t deny hope. She’d like to be resolved, and the only question is how. The trick is to move her away from fear towards something rational. Small victories, then, matter far more than bigger accomplishments. Thanksgiving wasn’t about conquest in the New World, but more about getting through the harshest of times.
Nov
13
“Hope” is the thing with feathers… (254)
Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of Me.
Commentary:
Those are indeed scare quotes around “Hope;” the bluntness of “thing with feathers” tells our speaker’s mood. This “thing” plants itself - perhaps unwelcome - in the “soul” and hammers away at a tune. It doesn’t bother to be articulate even though it is unceasing.
The absence of logos and its double nature - speech and reason are both missing here - should mean that “hope” is doomed to fail. It should reveal itself to be entirely false. But something strange happens upon reflection: even though a tune is not fully articulate, even though it merely mirrors the temporal, it still is distinct from the “Gale.” An empty, howling sound is no match for a sweet one. A “storm” could even have regrets from attempting to “abash the little Bird.” The “thing” has received a name because of its power: it stands distinct in aiding others, whereas the storm attempts to reduce.
We note that our speaker’s mood is improving although she is articulating a serious problem with “hope” - it is, strictly speaking, inhuman. Logos is well beyond it: animals can make music. “Hope” is very real, though: its sweetness (content) and merely having form (warmth distinguished from chaos/storm) are easily seen. We’d be stupid to deny its existence, as the speaker almost did in the first stanza.
Finally, Dickinson’s speaker moves away from the general to the particular with “I.” She’s heard the bird when she personally was cold; she heard it when gales and storms were trying her. Her gratefulness seems to have improved her mood. The implicit imagery is of a ship needing warmth and direction: a very good paper could probably be written on Dickinson’s use of the word “sweet” in this poem and in “This is my letter to the world.” Sweetness isn’t just a feeling: it is a path of sorts, it seems. That path, here, is tied to “extremity.” We note that the final couplet (”extremity,” “me”) are the only two lines besides the one introducing the “bird” to not end in a dash. The bird is the speaker at an extreme, which is why no crumbs are necessary. The inhuman composes the human, and again the question resounds: is this really “hope” we’ve discussed?