#333

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Sometimes the juxtapositions in the poems seem arbitrary, and I’m more than suspicious that they’re the product too often of the kind of wafting arrival of happenstance thought breezes that gust normally through anyone’s head, and that circulated randomly through the poet’s head, but that here were captured and pinned in published verse like a mounted row of airy butterflies. Sometimes, no examination of the relationships of the poems’ parts need go further than that. Sometimes, at any rate. Not always, of course. Some of these poems are much more deeply considered and artful. Which is this?

This particular poem has two parts. The subject of the first: Songs have been sent out, which will surprise some of the journals and publishers receiving them, even though they had asked for them. “Henry’s listeners / make up a gallant few.” While this whole tack right off strikes me as rather meta, self-absorbed and pointless—the poem is talking about the collection it’s an element of—it’s not as if we’re not used to that kind of thing by now, we gallant few. And then there’s that bit about the poems as “babies” and how they probably sound like Viet Cong to all the rest not of the gallant few. There are some tropes, assumptions and allusions that could be unpacked there, I suppose. Artistic production as akin to childbirth, the effect of those “babies” like Viet Cong, i.e., sneaking enemies, on the uncomprehending preponderance of poetical initiates who aren’t publicly crowing over Dream Songs. But, we’re reading them, so that’s not us. There’s a turn into the second part of the poem, about a rainstorm battering his roses. Do these two parts relate, or have they just been tossed into the same box? Here’s a box: Inside, you’ll find a candy thermometer and a child’s wooden toy block stamped with the letter “F”. Go ahead: Turn that into a poem. Here’s another box: A candle that smells like cranberries, and a hammer. Is just the juxtaposition enough? They’re in the same box, there must be a reason, it must mean something. An experienced reader/critic can work up any number of possible relationships and run with them. Possibly even discerning something out of unconscious psychological associations that the artist himself isn’t aware of. Well, maybe toys and candy can be read as references to childhood. Of course: It’s a poem about childhood. Hammers and candles are both ways of transforming energy, so this one is a poem about energy transfer. Run with it, but it’s all made up by the critic, unfortunately, if the juxtapositions are random. In my examples I deliberately started with elements that seemed disjunctive. If you’re creative, you can usually come up with some way to associate them. The poet puts those colliding elements out there and watches the response or not—amused, bewildered, or contemptuous. B. pretty rudely farted on the whole process once, which I think ought to be read as a gesture of contempt.

To see if the two sections relate on some deliberately meaningful level, or if they’re just rattling around in the same container, I think we need to look at the turn:

                                                Henry’s listeners

            make up a gallant few,

            as I have said before: bring nearer the lamp,

            we’ll find them out, with lightning, in the torrents

            that are merely Henry’s due

            and are good to the land: merciful rain

            beats back and forth, completing the destruction of his roses.

From there he circles the house, finding no other damage except to the roses, which are ruined, and are only his because he’s renting the house anyway. Poem over.

The only thing immediately connecting the two parts of the poem are allusions to light: Bring nearer the lamp to find out who the gallant few are, presumably because we can read a list of them or their responses or something like that, and then “with lightning”, other flashes of light. It’s hard to read by lightning, but the flashes are full of light, and they’re dramatic enough. The transition from lamp to lightning is unexpected and immediate, seamless, and it leads to what pretty much has to be a metaphor: the storm’s “torrents” that are “Henry’s due.” What are they? I can come up with an idea, but I’m only partially sure that I’m not making it up. Because the torrents, that are Henry’s due, are good to the land—leaving metaphor partially behind and moving into a description of rain, but also maintaining the metaphor at the same time, it looks to be something like money or recognition, things good for the speaker of the poem, and things which he has earned and deserves. They’re his due. So the rain does this double duty in the poem: It’s storming outside, which is partially destructive but mainly good for the land, and it’s also a metaphor for something, possibly the good things that can come from publishing poems and fostering a reputation. Henry then is the tenor of the metaphor and earth is the vehicle. The storm wrecks things too, flowers like individual poems, something like that. The storm of attention brought on by the success of the poems overall can fray or wither them individually.

So, do the two halves of the poem somehow reinforce or relate to or support each other? Sort of. Probably. It’s probably the case that it was storming when the poem was written, and quite likely the poet’s roses were quite literally battered by that. But that in itself doesn’t matter so much. What matters more is if that can be made into a symbol, the vehicle of a metaphor, or some poetical something along those lines. It takes a stretch to make that happen for a reader with this poem, I think, and if it was meant to, the relationship depends on some pretty vague and subtle associations. This poet probably felt those associations. I think he didn’t work very hard to help the reader find them, but maybe I’m being too demanding. Their presence together in the poem forces us to make the connection if we are gallant enough to stick with it. Does the poem “work”? Depends on how demanding one is for crystalline technique. I began thinking it doesn’t work. With hard work on my part, I’ve come to this: Probably there is a metaphoric relationship between the two parts of the poem. It’s not easy, and it’s not clear, though. The choice in this reading of the poem comes down to “subtle” or “sloppy.” Take your pick.