I've spent the last several months reading; much
of what I read was poetry. Today as I sat
on my parents' front porch and listened to my brother review for his AP
literature test, I realized two things: 1) I had read a lot of poetry and 2) it
is not nearly enough.
In the fall I took an Eliot and Auden seminar
during which, as the course title indicates, I read most of Eliot's poetic
works and a scattering of Auden's (who was, to be fair, much more prolific than
Eliot). As the sweet summer faded and dimmed into the dark November and as each
Wednesday evening sunset (which I could see if optimally situated near the
window in the overcrowded classroom) took place earlier and earlier during class, my Romanian teacher folded his
arms and shrugged bestowing a "pretty good" on anxious, eager to
please presentations. The melancholy of modernism is suited to an evening
autumn class, because when Eliot suddenly glimmers with hope, it is all the
more beautiful, and when Auden turns a phrase hearts beat faster out of the
gloom.
This evening, glancing over the shoulder of my little brother, I saw in the
table of contents of his poetry book "Musee de Beaux Arts" by Auden.
If you've not read it check it out:
http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html
This poem does several things excellently: it
draws together two different art forms (poetry and painting) and through that
union expresses something profound about life--that suffering does not happen
in an arena; but instead is experienced in the periphery of everyone else's
life. This is profound of course for people who experience deep and dark
suffering that other people not only fail to notice, but even those who do notice,
fail to sufficiently empathize. It is also true for the graduate student, whose
sufferings are of the academic sort: full of deadlines, word counts, caffeine,
and skimming. When the academic raises her head out of the sand expecting a pat
on the back and a knowing "well done!" from the outside world, she
instead sees that the world of church socials and doctor's appointments has
gone on without her; friends receive promotions, brothers grow up, sisters
prepare to get married, dogs get old, all without caring to hold their breath
over whether or not a thesis had been successfully argued. The
perspective of suffering is undeniably personal.
Yesterday skimming through an online collection
of love poetry on my way to the sonnets,
I stumbled again across an Auden poem that darkly tinged my light and happy
wedding bells attitude. This one I will insert so that you have no excuse not
to read it:
As I walked out one Evening by WH Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the
street.
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
"The years shall run like rabbits
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
And the first love of the
world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to
Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back.
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming
And the deep river ran on.
I'm disinclined to offer much commentary on the poem because the poem should be
personal and lead you into an introspective journey. For me, with my sister's
nuptials quickly approaching and my own not far away, the poem contrasts the
idealism of young love with the realistic ugliness and inevitable progression
of life. Love may start as a simple "first love of the world," but as
life progresses we each in the end must learn to "love [our] crooked
neighbour,/with [our] crooked heart:" flawed humans imperfectly loving
each other. However, despite Auden's "tears" and "distress"
the clocks in his poem remind us that "life remains a blessing/ Although
you cannot bless." The blessing comes from
outside ourselves--although our efforts towards love are crooked and we
are subject to the decay of time and the distopia of aging, some good yet
remains which we cannot destroy. It is not a warm and fuzzy poem, I'll admit,
to have in my mind with a wedding weekend approaching, but it provides a
healthy perspective and balance to the saccharine platitudes that sprout
like weeds around weddings.
This past winter I was enrolled in a Renaissance
lyric class which filled me to the brim with sonnet sequences. In this
exploration I learned a lot about the universal experience of love. The
Petrarchan sonnet sequence typically must involve a despised lover and his
cruel, beautiful, and unobtainable beloved. I came to see that there is little
difference in spirit and argumentative success between Billy Joel's "only
the good die young" and Marvell's "To his coy mistress." I also
saw that the cruel, blood thirsty mistress of
Spenser’s Amoretti shares many attributes with Alice Cooper's muse
for "Poison" and with Bon Jovi's lady who "Give[s] love a bad
name." Although many depictions of love in the Renaissance are
deliberately unhealthy (see Shakespeare's dark lady sonnets) there were a
handful of beautiful poetic explorations of what love could be, but often after
the poet has experienced the pain of despised love:
SONNET. LXVII.
LYKE as a
huntsman after weary chace,
Seeing the game from him escapt away:
sits downe to rest him in some shady place,
with panting hounds beguiled of their pray.
So after long pursuit and vaine assay,
when I all weary had the chace forsooke,
the gentle deare returnd the selfe-same
way,
thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke.
There she beholding me with mylder looke,
sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide:
till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,
and with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde.
Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wyld,
so goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld.
Spenser’s sonnet follows from a common
Petrarchan conceit: a hunt. Often in other poems, most hunts end in the poet
realizing the deer is unobtainable: either set apart for chastity or intended
for a better man than he. Spenser's courtship takes a turn at this point in the
sequence and heads towards betrothal and marriage. The culminating ode to his
sequence is an Epithalamion, a marriage song celebrating his marriage to
Elizabeth Boyle. His recorded poetic journey of love traces the highs and lows
of love: highly contrived, perhaps but nonetheless a poetic justification for a
bumpy road to love.
These, these and many more poems have been on my
mind; they catch my mental ear in a casual sentiment expressed at dinner time
over a glass of wine or in a late night chat with a too quickly growing up
brother and a wise father. As an English grad student who is always trying to
resist the ivory tower of academics, I find the way poetry sifts into life,
casting profound shadows on trivial moments and stray thoughts a relief. Art
has a place in the real world.
