My response to DS 131, a poem I titled “A Leak in the Ocean,”
is probably the best response I can think of to this odd but interesting DS 381.
If this blog project ever becomes an actual book, I’ll probably rewrite a
response to 131 and put the poem here where it fits so much better. That poem
didn’t actually have much at all to do with 131, but it’s a perfect fit here.
B. writes,
I am
frightened by the waves upon the shore
&
seldom steal there, wetter
with the
wild rain, but safe & back to the cave.
I think my poem is an apt response to that: Get out of your
cave or your cottage and get your ass wet out in the wild rain. That’s where
the crazed buffeting of life is found—just, don’t do anything stupid. And of
course, it’s all a metaphor: There are lots of ways to curl up in a ball. Don’t…
B.’s attitudes toward nature have slowly developed over the
course of the Dream Song cycle, and we see them being reaffirmed here. When
it comes to nature with B., when it figures at all, there is always that sense
of fear, resentment, anxiety toward it. The
waves upon the shore are a big loose metaphor for life and nature itself, and
yes, Henry is frightened by that, nature’s importance having come back to him
through his body’s disintegration. The most positive aspects of his existence
were lived through socialization, academics, literature, ambition, but it seems
to have all been a performance, and it always strikes me as hollow for all its
moments of brilliance and its manic energy. The undoubted moments of tenderness
toward his young daughter in the end weren’t enough to draw him away from all
that, toward life, and his wife couldn’t draw him toward it either. His contact
with life and nature was through his body, through sex and alcoholic addiction,
and the resultant psychological and physical suffering. Pain will get you natural
in no time, but of course it’s the dark and terrifying underside of the
natural. No wonder he was frightened by the metaphoric seashore.
Most of this poem, especially the untraceable (for now,
anyway) references of the second stanza, is likely built of images from some
dream, splashes of foam from out of the churning noosphere that got painted
here and fixed forever, like the utterly once-only-forever figure of a wave crashing
against a rock. Never again, but there it is: Look! Winslow Homer was such a master at catching and fixing these moments. Homer wasn’t afraid of the waves upon the shore.
Here is the revision:
Pushes stinging waves of sand.
Raindrops crack against my hood
Like June bugs on a windshield.
Still, this empty beach beckons.
No sensible human dares
Venture out on a day like this:
Leave the shore to hunkering gulls,
Willets and sandpipers probing the packed
Sand. But so often the correct
Decision is to turn from a warm
Cottage, calm and strawberries waiting,
And let a fierce Atlantic gale
Have you. Boiling and roaring swings
The ceaseless surf, its sticky molecules
Of life coalescing forms of foam
The wind scatters. A bluefish jumps,
Then others, a school of silver nightmare
The croakers and spots, weakfish and drums
Shrink from in whatever dreams
Their maker has descend on the roiling
Bubbles and currents of sleep offered
Such gentle fishes in the surf.
I stand buffeted, alone,
With wind and leaping fish, violent
Water, the wind-savaged gulls,
Watching the bluefish who jump then blow
Away, amazed, maybe, that the thin
Windy storm is more potent
Today than the compressed mad
Maelstrom from which they spring.
Rain soaks the atmosphere, and I know
Why the blues are jumping: Their limits
Have broken down. Churning sky
And storming crashes of gray water
Confuse the elemental difference
Till the ocean opens in froth
And the air is driven with the storm’s
Wild water. If jumpy fish
Can fly today, then I might breath
Their porous element, head
Beneath the waves to catch the croakers,
One last terror to consider
Before they sink amongst the broken
Shells. But blues’ teeth are sharp.
I’ll keep to the streaming sand, safe
From voracious bluefish gnashing the surf.
Here is the revision:
Gale
Sometimes it’s enough to just be
there
For a moment. A gale from the southPushes stinging waves of sand.
Raindrops crack against my hood
Like June bugs on a windshield.
Still, this empty beach beckons.
No sensible human dares
Venture out on a day like this:
Leave the shore to hunkering gulls,
Willets and sandpipers probing the packed
Sand. But so often the correct
Decision is to turn from a warm
Cottage, calm and strawberries waiting,
And let a fierce Atlantic gale
Have you. Boiling and roaring swings
The ceaseless surf, its sticky molecules
Of life coalescing forms of foam
The wind scatters. A bluefish jumps,
Then others, a school of silver nightmare
The croakers and spots, weakfish and drums
Shrink from in whatever dreams
Their maker has descend on the roiling
Bubbles and currents of sleep offered
Such gentle fishes in the surf.
I stand buffeted, alone,
With wind and leaping fish, violent
Water, the wind-savaged gulls,
Watching the bluefish who jump then blow
Away, amazed, maybe, that the thin
Windy storm is more potent
Today than the compressed mad
Maelstrom from which they spring.
Rain soaks the atmosphere, and I know
Why the blues are jumping: Their limits
Have broken down. Churning sky
And storming crashes of gray water
Confuse the elemental difference
Till the ocean opens in froth
And the air is driven with the storm’s
Wild water. If jumpy fish
Can fly today, then I might breath
Their porous element, head
Beneath the waves to catch the croakers,
One last terror to consider
Before they sink amongst the broken
Shells. But blues’ teeth are sharp.
I’ll keep to the streaming sand, safe
From voracious bluefish gnashing the surf.
Where did this one come from? A bizarre mashing of Stevens, Williams, and Seuss (or Carroll).
ReplyDeleteIt's cold in here, I'd rather have a house.
A house would be better, unless I were a mouse.
A mouse is furred yes, but also is so tiny,
It can't warm itself, gets squeaky and so so so so whiny.
I'd rather have a cave, I think, I'd rather be a bear
The mouse's house'd be next to me, I really wouldn't care.
(And that's what I think of this DS.)