November 6, 2007 10:00 PM

It's Difficult to Get News From Poems

Over the last several weeks of the first term, the students in Poetry, Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing have been focusing their efforts on the craft of poetry. As they have moved from poem to poem, they have been compiling enough pieces to comprise the semblance of a small manuscript. In fact, last evening they gave a poetry reading in the Hale Studio Theater where each student read three poems each from their manuscripts. It was a stunning performance to say the least. I wanted to share a few poems from one of the more quotable manuscripts.


    

              All winter,
                 Its yellow, orange coat warms
                      By a slow fire,
                           Its eyes,

             A dream
               Sparked
                   By a flower
                        That never blooms---

             Its name
                jagged but soft
                  And with a dancer's touch
                      Flowing through the bones.
   
            In a field of poppies
               She is mother
                   Of her own dream
                      Of never ending music

            And from her dream
                 She will come
                    Into the soft escape
                        To stop, and leap forward,

            Imitating
                 The tall, small-waisted dancers,
                       Or the music,
                          In its tremulous, red tone.

What I like about this poem is the control of tone and the careful diction. Its presents a definite, brooding mood. The writer has control over the language she chooses, and the phrasing is captivating. Of course, the effect is much more profound when read aloud. What makes for a good poet is one who is willing to play with words to create fresh, unique phrasing. The last line: "music in its tremulous, red tone" is particularly striking in its particular application of one sense's adjective to another's. It is reminiscent of something Neruda might do. The overall mixing of the arts in the poem as it alludes to music and dance underlines the necessity of all art to our lives as we crave the aesthetic in what is ordinarily a pedestrian existence. The allusion to dreaming resonates with ideas of imagination that goes beyond the boundaries of the ordinary as well. It is, finally, a poem about art and beauty as they combine in the senses of a dream.

Another poem from the same manuscript is ironically entitled "Where Dreams Aren't Made From" as it speaks about confrontations with reality:

The Hallways are
Cold
With constant light.
Footsteps are
Hard
On the linoleum floor.
The air smells
Sterile
and impenetrable.
My days are
Lost
In an oblivion.
I am
Caught
In my fantasy.
But I
Don't
Want to escape
That fantasy
Because reality
Scares
Me. Why?
I don't know.

The rhythm in this poem is established very clearly by the terse lines with emphasis on solid words like "cold," "hard," "lost," or "caught." Again, the poet demonstrates discipline and control--nothing superfluous or flamboyant about the piece. It asks a central question of the human condition. At the same time, it goes beyond the typical with the positing of an impenetrable reality that causes the poem. Poetry, itself, is sometimes impenetrable, and so, in a sense, the poem is self-reflexive. At least, we can agree that language like the reality it tries at times to accommodate can at times be impenetrable and spur us on to eschew it altogether, and we don't, like in this poem, have to ask "why." The poem is compelling because it answers its own question: we know why, don't we? It is there in the impenetrability of both reality and language. It is there in the oblivion of reality.

A third poem I want to offer up from this manuscript is a very efficient lyric entitled "Pure Simplicity":

I love you like snow
In February, dripping from
My kitchen sink, bathed
In the red light of morning.

The concise precision of this lyric is half of its beauty. The controlling simile is unique and compelling. The final image punctuates the poem consummately. It is the simplicity of the whole piece that is its power, however. The rhythm works effectively, too. Again, these are only a sampling of poems from a larger manuscript and it is only one manuscript of several. All in all, some 16 poets read some 48 poems at the reading last night. Poetry is alive and well at Mercersburg.