A love poem. It seems a bit sad
to me, only when it’s put in the context of this poet’s life. It’s obviously a
poem to his wife, Kate, who was much younger than he was, very beautiful,
smart, and had some heat to her apparently. It’s easy enough to agree with B.’s
puzzlement here, why she’s with someone like him so much older than her “to add
that she likes Henry / for reasons unknown.” But, still, it’s a love poem to a
woman who probably deserved a good love poem. They were married for eleven
years, and during that period he spent a lot of time in the hospital, for alcoholism
detox and repeatedly for what they used to call a nervous breakdown. Eventually,
as he decayed and declined, instead of his wife she became his caretaker. Eventually she gave up. Sometimes
I’ve defended his poems by noting that, look, it’s the record of a weird or
ugly figment of thought of a kind that passes normally through the minds of
most people, and that in most people would move through rapidly and be gone. But the poet catches it and sets the fleeting feeling in print, to be gawked at
forevermore. Set in stone. In gawking at it we also feel a bit of revulsion. It’s
that thing we recognize in ourselves, and he gave it substance in words. This
poem is on the other side of that coin. Something rather beautiful, and while
we see the typical twisted Berryman syntax occasionally, there are also
classical references, to Shakespeare’s language, the language of 19th
century love poems like Browning and others. It’s conventionally beautiful, and
it’s well crafted. He’s got the chops to pull off something like this no
problem. Of course, it’s the record of something ordinary and lovely lighting
like a moth in his imagination, but that didn’t stay very long. We get the
record of it though, but it leaves me with the feeling that there’s something a
little bit pitiful going on here. There’s a kind of standard response to
praise, or love, which is to say, aww shucks. Me? Moi? But that’s mainly just custom or even etiquette. Given the
frailties of this guy, there’s something more than that. Well-adjusted people
can accept a measure of praise. Well-adjusted people in strong relationships
know on some level they deserve the love that comes to them from a lover; they
should. Here, he just seems puzzled, and is saying thank you for this mystery—for
now. In the end, if you don’t feel you deserve it, you’ll likely sabotage it.
That’s what he did, of course, for the third time. Neglect, constant infidelity,
rivers of alcohol, the old litany.
So, the context of this nice but
conventional love poem adds a poignancy to it. Poignant: adj. evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret.
We probably ought to let the man
write a simple love poem to his wife, but it has been nearly a half year now, a
Dream Song a day for just short of six months, and I’ve learned a few things
about this fella that I’d just as soon have done without. I know the love poem
is not quite the simple love poem it seems. It could have been. It is on the
surface. But in the end it’s more complicated than that.
And one other thing, a year later: It's the ill-sped book that is charged to whisper love to her. He's not doing it. He can't, is the implication. Not directly. If there's anything to say, it has to be mediated by the work--which is all that matters, ever. It's not a love poem, it's an apology poem, but with the understanding that there is no intention of making change. Always unreachable, and sorry, but that's just how it is. So why are you even here, my dear? There's the unintelligible miracle of it.
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