Dissolving the Endless Distance
Most of you know by now that I write the occasional piece of poetry even though I’d classify myself as a novelist if anyone asked. But one of the main things I enjoy about poetry – reading and writing it – is that it asks us to think, and think deeply about not only what the poem means, but how it uses language to shape and deepen that meaning.
Studying poetry at university was probably the most helpful class I ever took when it comes to my writing.
Oh sure, you say. Kate, you write horror/paranormal/supernatural stories. Where does poetry fit into that?
It’s about language. Poems are all about language and in an extremely compressed form. They say so many things using so few words. They give you insight, not only into what it means to be human, but into what language and communication is about and the ways in which it can be displayed, manipulated, enjoyed, all in an effort to provide the reader with some deeper meaning.
I was reading through some of my favourite poems and came across this one, an excellent illustration of what I’m trying to say.
Meditation at Lagunitas
BY ROBERT HASS
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
This poem fascinates me, especially as the poem is a meditation, a form of ode.
I have every admiration for the ode; to be able to capture something in its moment, to be able to see something then and there the way it is, has its own satisfaction. How quickly though that moment is lost. It seems to me little wonder that so many odes focus on nature, which suffers its loss but regenerates, or takes for subject matter objects which stand unmoved against time – mostly unmoved.
I’ve found in my own writing, when attempting the ode, that loss creeps in even so; the associations that come to me more often than not are ones of time, change, and lost opportunities. Experience – the way we see, feel and translate the world around us becomes, as in Hass’s poem, a series of associations. Nothing is what it is on its own and nothing can be captured in its entirety, pinned down, labeled.
To me, it is as though we see something and yearn to capture its essence in our writing but are afraid even while we try that it will never be so; even the most beautiful and concise language is never enough, and something is always lost and in most ways this is so whether it is poetry, short stories or even perhaps novels that we write.
“…From this ode the world from words that burst
open, and this awful sadness spilling
even so from the rapture that contains everything.
To Mount Victoria – Ian Wedde
Posted on May 21, 2012, in Writerly Workbox and tagged associations, compression, Ian Wedde, language, meaning, novels, poetry, Robert Hass. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Kate, I feel a tangent coming on, but bear with me…..this is one of the more thought-provoking and profound pieces you’ve written. I do so appreciate your ability to think so far below the surface of things. And the poem of Robert Hass you shared was a gift to your readers. There is so much within those lines, that I often had to pause and reread it…caught at a meshing of word choice and idea. Where he says, “I felt a violent wonder at her presence”–I was taken by the unique combination of two ideas that seem so diametrically opposed, but upon deeper consideration, found that it was the perfect way to describe that sort of connection with another person.
And other phrases that clenched me and slowed me to attention: “After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves” and “desire is full of endless distances” and “the way her hands dismantled bread” and “there are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.”
Interesting, that while the poem appears at first blush to be philosophical–with what seems to be a nod toward Platonic thought (recall: “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry”) when he says “each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea”–he reveals a defiance to this idea as the poem continues. And his casual, almost conversational style manages to touch on more visceral portions of the experience of not just human beings, but humans, BEING. In the Republic, Plato excluded poets in his idea of the perfect state because he felt poets were mentally ill. And depending on our definition of madness, I would say that close examination of the details in this existence we have certainly has the potential for it. I’ve also echoed this sentiment when I said “A little bit of crazy is coping skill.” Truer now, more than in Plato’s time, I believe.
Yet, perhaps ironically, in all his works, Plato used a poetic form of dialogue to impart his philosophical messages–comprehensive examinations of ideas from the position of macrocosm, while poetry uses microcosm to often make the same points. Robert Hass does this with his poem–it’s a vignette, more than anything. A random, yet cogent trail of ideas connected by those sometimes-ghostly truths we all either embrace or run away from. So perhaps Hass tips a hat to Plato and then proceeds to “respectfully disagree.”
In the “Allegory of the Cave” Plato was using a literary device to make a point about perception –and more importantly, a worldview. But at the heart of this allegory, he is still being poetic. For he was holding a magnifying glass on human nature, and a mirror to humans in particular. Perhaps this is what Hass was getting at, perhaps not. But the point is, this poem makes the erudite reader ask questions like that. And it’s also accessible because it’s not pedantic, but a series of thought-events, segued into a greater picture. It’s like not just a painting, but watching the process of the painting being rendered. So he might have begun with minutia but ultimately, he arrived at a place of allegory–to reveal the same sort to world views that Plato so eloquently illuminated in his dialogues.
You know I understand what you mean about our need to capture those moments with brutal honesty in our writing. I am also always suspicious of my ability to capture them completely. They are like slippery eels of contradiction; shapeshifters that niggle us into changing our mind about what the truth really is, and what it is that needs to be said, as opposed to what we’re trying to say. I also completely agree with your point “nothing is what it is on its own.” We are a product of the segues as much as the events they link. And in my mind, everything is connected somehow. It’s one vast web of related data, and every event, or emotion, or pain or joy can be turned around and viewed from so many angles. I suspect the trick is discovering which angle works best for you–meaning, which angle doesn’t make you a mad poet.
Thank you for bending my brain. I’ll try to avoid the madness.
Jae
Jae, this is exactly what i enjoy so much about poetry – the connectivity you mention. Language is what leads the writer through the poem, and oftentimes it leads somewhere surprising – following a strand or two of those connections can bring the writer, and hence the reader to a place of wonder and strengthened understanding. Poetry provides a form of shorthand for the world and our place in it. And the fact that it is language itself, something so often slippery and imprecise, that allows us to find those connections? Well, that just makes it so much more wondrous and plain good fun.