#153

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So the poem begins with this: “I’m cross with god who has wrecked this generation,” and right away I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t seem to me to have been always god’s fault, the wreckage of that mid-century generation. Not when alcohol is involved to such a degree in the demise of several of the poets B. goes on to list—Jarrell, Schwartz, Roethke, Plath (not sure who Richard refers to—perhaps Richard Wright who died in 1960). He says that at least god has spared Lowell, who suffered from a mental illness, and of course B. joined himself to the list in 1972. Ann Sexton, another of the confessional poets, battled depression and other mental disorders and eventually succumbed to her suicidal tendencies in 1974. The real point, I guess, is that life isn’t always easy or fair. Are poets really more sensitive than most others, and thus more prone to being victimized by the difficulties and unfairness? That’s the myth. I’m not buying it myself. There are a lots of sensitive, healthy people out there, and sensitive healthy poets too.

The point of B.’s poem here, though, is that the news—of Delmore Schwartz’s death, of course—is a blow: “never again can come, like a man slapped, / news like this.” It forces the word the poem is built around, “later.” This speaker is stunned, and whatever drive to work or joy in life there exists that might get him moving, it’s put on hold. The word is apt, and B. simply states that “we suffer on, a day, a day, a day.” Anything else will need to wait for later, until the stunning news sinks in.

This is all very depressing.

Probably it’s sincere enough. It hurts to lose someone whom one claims as a friend, and the specifics of Schwartz’s case might have hit a bit too close to home. I’m not going to say that lamentation this sustained amounts to a shrewd career move, even if it perhaps allied said lamentationist in question to the public outpourings of the better-connected of the literati.

There’s a poem by Mary Oliver that I do dearly love, “The Place I Want To Get Back To” https://russellboyle.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/the-place-i-want-to-get-back-to-by-mary-oliver/. I love the whole poem, the situation and the images, the tone of humility and gratitude, but there is this one section that I’ve always figured is maybe a bit overstated: “and what can my life / bring to me that could exceed / that brief moment?” It is a nice moment. Absolutely. Truly. But, still—really? I’m having a similar reaction to the twelve-Dream-Song sequence grieving the untimely death of Delmore Schwartz. Yes, grief. Absolutely. Truly. But: “A friend of Henry’s contrasted God’s career / with Mozart’s, leaving Henry with nothing to say / but praise for a word so apt.” [The word is “later.”]

Really?

We beat on, boats against the current.