The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Comment:

This is a strange poem, but then again, America is a strange place, even if everyone professes to understand it. The name “America” does not occur in the poem: “the land,” “ours,” “she” and the ambiguous-enough “the gift outright” all substitute. The last word of the poem is “become:” does America even exist yet?

A relation between existence and possession is posited. “The land” – again, not “America” – “was ours.” At a later point, “we were the land’s.” Possession, at the least, marks existence, even if it does not properly name what is: “our land,” “her people.” Reciprocal possession might be love, but note “before” – reciprocal possession starts with one claiming possession. This creates the problem of time: did anyone make a claim on us? Did we make prior claims?

On that latter question, we most certainly did: there are two distinct sets of colonies and traditions, Massachusetts and Virginia. Our claim to those plots was based on the English claim to us; do we want to say England loved us? Part of the poem seems to refute this idea. If love is reciprocal possession, then “Possessed by what we now no more possessed” seems to imply England had nothing like true love. But that’s a shallow, lazy way out given this: The deed of gift was many deeds of war. And Frost is well-aware of the significance of “life, liberty and property” to our heritage, the precursor of “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Possession seems to be the possibility of love by mid-poem, though. After all, “we” were “withholding” “something,” and we felt enervated. Possession is about strength; when we feel weak, we are experiencing the most base reaction. This is not love, not yet. This is only “salvation in surrender.” We are brought to the final of 5 sentences, which is itself 5 lines. “We” are “the gift outright,” it seems, but all the doubts the modern Left has about America are there: “vaguely realizing westward” implies we did not and do not know where we are going. “But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, / Such as she was, such as she would become” implies that leaving the Old World came at enormous cost: can we ever progress, or are we forever marked by frontier crudity?

What is unsaid is vital: we have a name for the New World, and it is ours, all of ours. As many of us were slavers, that many more died to emancipate. The lack of the name is the will to sacrifice, and that is the authentic piety of love. We have surrendered to the land, it takes us where it will; there is a body/soul relation throughout the poem, and a comment on what spirit is in “unstoried,” “unenhanced.”

Sunlight scorched; almost immediately, shirt dripped with sweat and I retreated into a Starbucks. Inside, told this was dry heat, that humidity would arrive and make this that much worse. People-watched from the window for an hour or two. Lots of gorgeous women wearing loose-fitting clothes, seemingly unaffected by anything else. A few homeless people struggling to even walk properly. One parked himself in front of a trash can and dug through it; his expression turned to glee as he discovered a whole container of food there. I made myself watch, thinking what I had said at the Twitter conference: This is my country. This is not acceptable.

I walked around a bit more: 5 hours before Collegium would arrive, 6 before rehearsal. Went looking for my favorite brand of pens, the finer the tip (0.5 is just acceptable enough for me) the better. I don’t get them up North and I don’t feel like buying $25 worth of stuff from Amazon all the time. Ended up back at the hotel writing about Dickinson, having bought an inferior brand of pen.

Saw a woman drop off her son at the hotel, complaining the whole time about the traffic and worrying about how to get back. A bit too familiar: I love my parents, but my whole life any and every excuse to not do something was offered even while doing that something. Eventually this turned me into being scared of doing things myself while making bad excuses. A good friend has told me I “walk nervous,” and that’s true. – I wonder how Dickinson felt, almost never leaving home. -

After rehearsal, a few of us visited Rice University. Valhalla was neat: an attempt to create a dive bar atmosphere for geeks. Reminded me of Sugar Mom’s in Philadelphia, but without the artsy/trashy crowd (at least on this visit). Of significance was Duncan Hall, but I don’t want to get into the academic debates about schools of architecture. Rather, I’ll say this: the building is awesome. Rice’s campus was awesome. You felt like this school cared for learning, cared for its students, cared to stand for something. I realize that the middle statement is debatable – a quick contrast with my undergraduate years should suffice.

Writing stopped as going around with choir led to lots of neat buildings to behold: an alumni’s home with beautiful wood floors, and despite a lot of nice-looking stuff, a feeling of space and comfort. The church we sang the wedding in: awful acoustics but a Gothic look. Finally, Annunciation, with good acoustics and much beauty and no real comfort: we had a job to do.

In the airport, a reservist heading off to training soon. He had joined shortly after 9/11 because he wanted to serve. He wasn’t bitter about Army life: he talked about how he had seen many new places – Germany, Spain, England, France, etc. and loved them all. He spoke well of his time in Iraq. But he was clear about its limitations: he married a fellow soldier and they were divorced now. He had been in Houston visiting his child. We talked about Transformers, football, Star Trek and watched gorgeous women pass by.

Finally, on the plane, an evangelical professor trying to convince his circles to take the Great Books seriously. Again, no writing: the conversation began by talking about film. He was very excited about the books he was writing and the programs his school had set up. I heard a lot about Dante. At this point, I wasn’t a terribly patient listener, I must confess. There’s a certain “in Texas, everything is bigger” mentality that I both love and hate; like literary theory, it attempts to define things by genre, as opposed to seeing how individuals compose a whole. We didn’t debate, I was eager to hear about his approaches to texts, and I’m more than willing to recommend his work. I just need to be at Starbucks, with pens I like, slightly removed from the scorching heat.

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch —
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

Comment:

“Stepped” recalls the first word of Plato’s Republic (katabain, “I stepped down”) and the title of Xenophon’s autobiographical account, the Anabasis (”step up,” “ascend”). We don’t need to get into any detail about either work, though – the question is why horizontal motion here, as opposed to vertical motion. Is asking for life to stay roughly on the same course the most difficult thing? Is there some anxiety the speaker is trying to avoid?

“Slow” tells the movement of the body, “cautious” the hesitancy of the mind. Body and mind are united by means of a “way,” a path one must travel: perhaps this is a means, again. The “Stars” are most certainly only felt, not necessarily known. The Sea is most certainly known, and I think we know where the speaker’s gaze is directed. The avoiding of anxiety is itself anxiety, but we didn’t need a packed poem to tell us that.

“I stepped” parallels “I knew not;” not all “ways” are created equal. “Plank to Plank” forces the ambiguity of “but the next:” “plank” is not “blank,” it has content, implying harm to the speaker. “But the next” is closer to “blank,” but is itself hesitancy. “Would be my final inch” – why not “could?” “Could” would imply “can,” thus giving agency to the planks (which are capitalized anyway). “Would” implies will – are we getting an account here of where will must of necessity move? Not ascending, not descending, but straight across?

“This” gave me “that:” something alien to the speaker has been at work the whole time, even as that something is not an external object. “Gait” is not just one’s manner (body/mind unity), but from Old Norse gata, meaning “path.” “Precarious” is the word that stuns: the Latin is precarius, “obtained by entreaty.” Something uncertain is something prayed for.

Some call this “experience,” but this may not be experience. This is the unassisted, unreflective will, perhaps, and it is making the leap into the divine. Fine, but note that the divine itself has literally dealt with an ocean of chaos.

Also, let me know if there are posts you want to see featured on that page which I forgot about. You wouldn’t believe – even with categories and tags – how long it takes to update this page, and how many mistakes get made.

Thanks in advance.

When they come unexpected,
love and letters unsettle
as if to blow penciled hues
that prick the pupils of one
who scans a dying horizon
for wooden branches of floral text.
Hold out the web of your impulse;
turn what stands before you to Braille.
A built-in face would never last
the length of the imprisoned’s recipe—
though every striptease proves
the paper’s palpitations never-ending.

Canned matter is the newest hype
that we can miss the silence without,
so acutely put pin to word
& begin exhuming the body.
A branch overhead rattles
its one death’s leaf,
and we label the wind
an instrument to grief.

Love letters, spelling meter, insist
a figure stands by the forest’s edge,
dusk-lit with glowing orb–perhaps
a cigarette—until in the stare too long
a peacock grows
from budding tendrils
that preen and nest in the folds
of wholesome damage, your eyelets.
It is a bird’s eye view that sees you
lying in the open spine,
flat & abridged,
a crisis that brings you to this:
rising to blindness as witness,
the embryo of what’s already come
delivers the map for a return visit.

Comment:

Our concern is the “agent,” the active reader, who does not accept “canned matter.”

That’s about all the concern we can pinpoint at the start, because it isn’t clear whether we can “call” true readers or not. The very first line: “When they come unexpected;” “love” and “letters” unsettled might be the sum total of any individual, really.

The consistent metaphor in this poem is that of trees, a forest. Our presumably true reader is initially trying to see those trees particularly: “wooden branches of floral text.” We know something is amiss from the first stanza; all the imagery is physical, emotional. The “hues” “prick,” the “built-in face” might be staring inward at the stomach, staring and simultaneously burned by that “recipe.” The physical imagery – the idea of material hitting more material to cause sight is right out of classical atomism – leads us to the ambiguity of a “striptease” and “the paper’s palpitations.” Are we really looking at the world, or just navel-gazing and enjoying that a bit too much?

Our speaker tells the audience to “hold out” the “web of… impulse,” to read the world by means of touch. This may not be good advice, but it could be the only way through the problem. The direction is towards the world, away from the self. The key is that the impulse is unreflective: if it turns out to be too self-centered, well, at least you’ve learned who you are in the world.

The second stanza presents the crux of the matter:

Canned matter is the newest hype
that we can miss the silence without,
so acutely put pin to word
& begin exhuming the body.

“Without” could refer to where the silence is: it is beyond us, and “canned matter” – perhaps within us – blocks our access. “Without” could also result in: “without canned matter… the newest hype.” That latter reading indicates that hype only exists because we, as individuals, make it work. We find all sorts of excuses to miss silence. Either way, the meaning is nearly the same: the true reader has to be intensely personal, but also able to step beyond himself. This corresponds to the hype/silence distinction, but in the most unexpected way described above. Not many in the social sciences blame individuals for giving into hype, or see “silence” as constitutive of the universal, the whole.

To “acutely put pin to word,” then, is to see the self as having been consumed by hype, and aiming to fix that. “Exhuming the body” is exhuming the canned matter that to this point has been oneself. We now have another strange problem: how far can the true reader, seeking the authentic, go with this process? The grotesqueness of the imagery is not an accident.

The singularity of the leaf as death is distorted by our labeling the wind. This marks a settling, however. We might have gone far enough. “Love” and “letters” now combine in the third stanza, and words are defined by their internal order (spelling) and external ordering (meter). But this is not a nice, neat process either: to combine is to posit intelligence. Now we want to see the forest, not just the trees, so there must be more than the light of the sun. There must be a figure like us – ours being the only sort of intelligence we recognize immediately – nearby. This time the eyes are affected not by what they take in, but by what they don’t take in. The peacock flowers in the absence of anything actually seen.

How did we move to blindness as promise? It isn’t even clear Oedipus learns anything when he blinds himself. We think we’re not seeing anything, we think the eyes are being damaged by absence. That’s exactly the wrong thought: we’re actually seeing the framework, the “eyelets” are holes within the “tendrils.” If it sounds reversed in the poem, consider how elaborate things can be folded in multiple dimensions.

And consider that we are beholding a bird now, beholding us. The framework, to truly speak, is animate. And we do not quite know the nature of its soul. The confrontation has no easy ending; we can’t quite look in the eyes of a bird and tell everything. We can only tell that we’ve hit an impasse, that we’re more vulnerable than we thought we were, and we need to revisit. Note that navel-gazing and base desires have dropped from the picture: the text is now its own concern, and we are in the midst of it, called.

Otherwise (from Poetry 180)
Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Comment:

We begin with four legs horizontal, at rest, when all of a sudden two strong ones apart from the bed exercise their strength and move.  Distinctions between animate/inanimate, human and animal drive the first stanza: cereal has no adjectives; milk has “sweet” (taste); peach is “ripe” (a stage of development) and “flawless” (aesthetic judgment). The mind grows in appreciation and thus we can be charged with dominion: we ascend, leading a friendly four-legged creature to certain trees.

But that is part of the “work” one “loves.” Another starting point for wisdom is that it might not be possible to conceive of life without death. We begin with four legs horizontal again, but this time entirely animate; the human has finally met and appreciated the human; the ascent is complete. The descent, though, is not cataclysm or despair. It’s written into human life on a much deeper level. The ritual of eating, the craftsmanship for candlesticks: death begins with the human trapped in the entirely human realm: that is a web we have to weave. We are finally left with our own imagination; the mate cannot be there entirely because we are seeing so many other possibilities. He or she would just be one other, even if we can only imagine ourselves with them. “I know / it will be otherwise” is not predicated on experience, then, but on a deeper truth, perhaps one already said.

I weigh every stone you lay in my hand.
I measure the diameter and the thickness
For perfect erosion. This white one spins
Cloudy like a Saturn ring on the wash,
the bones imprisoned dive and splash apart
Into fish-gill ripples. Do it again!
Do it again! You implore amazed at
This latest trick of the imagination.
It’s nothing yet. Take some shade and water
And squint. Let me lift you up. You’re glassier,
Less polished, fingerprinted. When you spin
You dig flinty nails into my forearms.
I don’t want to let go – you don’t mirror
The light, you bottle it in shards of skin.

Comment:

A parent and child – perhaps a father and daughter – are on a beach. He may have told her a story: bring me a rock; if it’s the right shape and size, then when I throw it far away into the water, it will dissolve and free the creature within. The comic darkness of this story is almost completely remote when compared with the wonder of the inanimate becoming animate.

But there is more than the girl’s wonder; this follows the order of a Petrarchian sonnet; we haven’t seen anything yet. “Diameter,” “thickness,” “Saturn:” when the white stone is thrown, it forms an arc in relation to the body of water; one has to think of a ring of Saturn cut in half, then placed vertically. The amazing thing is how we notice an entire world based upon what spins around it: to notice our world is truly to look up at the clouds and imagine. That arc – “on the wash” – is invisible even if like a ring of Saturn it is visible: what matters is what it gives visibility to.

“Thickness” is like Dickinson’s “blank.” It is only a container for life. “Diameter” is the “trick of the imagination.” It suffices to say that when the girl is “spun” in a circle and her “flinty nails” – an innocent but substantial expression of trust – are considered that she is literally of much greater significance than a stone. The magic of the poem is the speaker’s realizing this analogy: ‘inanimate : animate :: animate : ?’ It is the parent whose imagination has not been lost who moves us from cloudy to glassy to light.

I’m not sure whether Jon Corzine is corrupt or incompetent; the more I read about his job performance, the more I subscribe to the latter. He is more than willing to be surrounded by those who are corrupt, and as you can tell from those links, he is more than willing to praise them. Perhaps this has something to do regarding his own (limited) skill at governing.

But the core of the case against him lies with the state of New Jersey’s economy. Job creation was supposedly a priority, and this graph shows beyond words how well that has succeeded. Moreover, when we consider the theme of “fiscal responsibility,” we have to consider the reports of how money is being spent now and how he plans to spend money.

The case is airtight. It should be no surprise that Corzine has decided he should try to run against President Bush. If you’re liberal, find another candidate: he’s going to use progressive issues to make you accept years of job losses, appointments of cronies, and spending that is coming at your children’s expense. If you’re conservative, voting for Christie is a good thing, but it would be nice to hear more about fiscal conservatism generally, and his specific plans in greater detail.