Here’s a great line from a critic, one Anthony Caleshu in
response to DS 305: “But by this point in the long poem, the question of
identity has been turned upside down once again; Henry is no longer a product
of Berryman so much as Berryman has become a product of Henry, the celebrated
dummy speaking through the slumped posture of the defeated ventriloquist.”
Ouch! That one really hurts, but it’s an apt image, a great image. There wasn’t
much of the man left, beaten down by relentless substance abuse, but the
isolated, attenuated ability to write was still functioning, like the smile of
the Cheshire Cat, and it just kept on talking. The rest of the person was
fading.
His writing was working well here though. This poem is
fascinating, but it’s shadowy and obscure and needs to be carefully unpacked.
To start: A black footed penguin is a pretty standard looking penguin, with a
white breast and some complicated black and white patterning, but the white
breast of the bird is striking: Pure and white. “Amid infinite quantities of
gin,” something arrives “like a guilty bystander.” The gin is a familiar enough
reference by now and quite concrete, relatable and specific. Henry has been
drinking again. It’s not really possible right away to figure out just what “Henry’s
subject” is though. It might be from a dream. It’s either that or some obscure waking
life-moment the poet has chiseled out for us. But Mickey Mouse and The Tiger
seem pretty concrete: They’re toys on a table. A reference to childhood. Probably
his daughter.
But not so fast. “Leaving the ends aft open.” The “aft” is
at the rear of a boat, so it’s something trailing or behind. The “ends aft open”
almost sounds like an anus. It’s a fairly crass and oblique reference to a
child? But “touch the means, / whereby we ripen.” Children cause us to grow up,
don’t they? To ripen can be a euphemism for aging, but it could also mean to
come into fruition. You can touch it? This thing whereby we ripen? Is it
physical, is it associated with a body? You change your infant daughter’s
diapers. You touch her, wipe her bottom, and wash her in ways that would be
unthinkable when she grows up, but with a baby it is all good, natural,
appropriate. But it’s still an oblique line. Then there’s this: “Touch by all
means the means / whereby we come to life.” This is another oblique line, this
time referring to the baby’s mother, his wife, I believe. The reference is subtly
sexual. These are references, then, to his family, and they involve the close
intimate touching that a father and husband are permitted. But remember, the “subject”
doesn’t leave room to ponder those toys on the table, also symbols for the
presence of family. Something is afoot, something big. It helps to have the
context of the other Dream Songs, which have set up (at least in my reading of
them) this tension between life and family on one hand, and work and legacy on the
other. The subject is the bright, gleaming penguin-glow of the artistic legacy.
“Enduring the manner for the matter.” I think I see it: The manner is the pain
of life, or more accurately, the pain of not-life, the pain of drinking, the
guilt and shame of guilt and shame, the regret at the time lost, the love not
given. The matter?: The work. The manner is the alcohol that fuels the art. The
work is the result. You endure the manner for the matter. This is an ars
poetica moment. The subject from back in the first stanza is the vocation of
the artist.
“I sing quickly, offered Henry, I / sing more quickly.” As
we age, our perception of time speeds up. It may only be that any individual
increment—an hour, a year—is in smaller and smaller proportion to the total
number of those increments we’ve experienced. But this statement is immediately
contradicted: “I sing with infinite slowness finite pain.” When I look back at
the preceding line, I almost want to understand Henry as saying to the “subject”—his
artistic vocation—not “I sing more quickly” but “I will sing more quickly.” Time is running out, the body is giving
out and the brain will follow, so I promise, Mr. Vocation, Sir, that I’ll get
on the ball. There is still work left to do, I know.
But he’s slowing down. He took care in his work to, by God,
lay it all out there. And it hurt. “I sat by fires when I was young.” Fires are
where you go to contemplate, and where you tell stories. It’s an opportunity to
contemplate life, because the career of a fire is a metaphor for our career
through life. It’s young and fragile at first, with all kinds of promise
limited only by its fuel, it gets established and roars strongly for awhile,
then its fuel is used up and you’re left with powdery grey age and finally,
dead ashes. When you’re older, the fire burns more slowly.
This was an obscure and difficult poem to find, but I’m
satisfied now that I have it opened up. Caleshu’s remark that I began with now
looks snarky as much as anything, but it was clever. He certainly didn’t engage
this difficult poem though. Probably wasn’t his purpose. This is a serious—actually,
deadly serious—poem, a particularly taut, translucent iteration of a theme The Dream Songs have been delineating from
a number of angles recently.
I ran into friend, colleague and poet, Matt, at a party a
couple days ago, and he mentioned a story about Berryman. Asked in a televised
interview what advice he would give a young poet, B. cocked his head, gathered
himself, bore forward and said with a startling intensity, “Love your wife.” (I
haven’t tracked down the interview. This is what I remember being told.) But it
makes perfect, perfect sense that he might say that. B. was haunted, I fear, by
what he had forsaken in his life, what he had chosen to forsake. The ghostly
demon of his vocation whispered to him “Thou shalt not love,” and it may quite
well be that B. heeded that suggestion more than he should have. It’s maybe one
of the saddest things I have ever heard.
I appreciate this DS more after reading your comments. What at first seemed abstract is, I think, pretty concrete. Unfortunately, it's also not clear. I think you're onto something with the diaper changing! I wondered if the penguin was a waiter, B in a restaurant, but it makes more sense that it's is kid.
ReplyDeleteThe rhyme of brain with pain jarred me. I don't like it, coupled with the boring "corner of my brain." But I'm learning to like the rest of this one.