Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

I can’t think of many things more magical than falling snow, but I’ve always had terrible circulation. Yet, I can remember a few precious years of not noticing the cold, even long after it had stung my cheeks and seeped deep into my bones. My father would have covered any potentially exposed skin with fleece and waterproof-lined down, executing daily on his secret trick. If you put your mittens on before sliding your arms down the sleeve of your winter coat, you form a protective seal– avoiding that freezing gap left otherwise at your wrists. When you walk outside like that, bundled up in care from head to toe, you don’t feel the chill at your back when you lie flat in a snowdrift. You see the stark bluebird sky above, and the way everything sharply sparkles in the cold. You notice if the snow feels powdery or packable; can you build a snowman, or will you take sleds to the hillside?

To not find “misery in the sound of the wind,”  Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” believes that “ One must have a mind of winter,” and “have been cold a long time” (8, 1,4). The poem suggests that to accept winter, one needs to have forgotten the satisfaction of a warmer time. Remembering anything less bare and biting than January will only bring a feeling of bitterness for what used to be. Ultimately, “the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (13-15). For a poem entitled “The Snow Man,” the sentiment that winter’s listener must be empty himself in order to accept the emptiness around him struck me as strange. Snowmen, the product of play, should represent a certain kind of joy. Here, the snow man has grown frozen himself, filled with the numbness of winter and none of its bliss.

Really, you can grit your teeth through winter, or just accept its bitterness. I think that truly loving winter entails entering it in a way that permits you to love it; to wrap yourself up in warmth that will last long enough for you to access the priorities of childhood. To be able to play, protected from the elements. I was a lucky enough kid to know a well-lit home, where I could eventually run to as dusk fell. If we’re all to be faced with January’s cold despair, we all deserve to know the kind of care that seals out the cold.

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover” opens with the lines “I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- /dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon in his riding” (1-2). I initially read “minion” as someone who is under the command of some greater (evil) authority, but Norton defines the word as “darling, favorite” (1222). The falcon is the morning’s beloved and the daylight’s prince. In these two lines, enjambment occurs mid-word; the bird initially seems to be a king, before we learn that he is merely an heir, or a “dauphin” to daylight’s domain. 

Despite his small size, he braves strong wind and does so joyfully: “In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing / As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding / Rebuffed the big wind” (5-7). He does not cower from danger, but gleefully takes challenge as an opportunity; this sense of optimism rings true considering the fact that the falcon is a darling of the morning. Every morning represents a new beginning, without pre-existing judgment over what might happen. The falcon doesn’t limit himself by his size, but wholeheartedly believes in his potential to succeed. 

The falcon seems to establish his dominion in the sky, untouchable in the open air, but by the end of the poem, this strength begins to falter, or “Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion / Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier” (10-12). Norton references multiple interpretations of “buckle,” but I read this poem’s use as implying some failure amidst great pressure. The falcon drops from the sky towards almost certain death, but his fiery descent inspires awe. He is a “chevalier,” noble and true to the end. Hopkins dedicated the poem “To Christ Our Lord;” the comparison between the falcon and Christ places heavy emphasis on this theme of sacrifice, with both dying for some presumed greater good. The final lines offer a sense that the falcon finds glory even as his reign in the sky comes to an end: “Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear / Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion” (13-14). The “blue-bleak embers” create a contrast with the initial bright morning, suggesting that dark night has come to quell the day’s command. The fire once within the falcon has faded to embers, but still “gash gold-vermilion.”  The bird’s spirit remains brilliant, even after his mortal body has disappeared.

Anne Bradstreet’s poem “The Author to Her Book” represents the speaker’s brainchild – her written work – in its living form. Yet, she holds little maternal pride for the “ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,” especially after this child was, from her side,  “snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true” (1, 3). She seems to hold her own mind in some contempt, though false friends seem interested in what it produces, and thus decide to steal away her ideas. She still considers these friends somewhat senseless as well as disloyal; she does not believe they could see real merit in her creations.

When she finally reclaims this creation, she feels embarrassed, as her “blushing was not small” (7). She considers her reclaimed work, or her “rambling brat (in print) should mother call” (8), to be “unfit for light” (9). The speaker refers to herself as ‘mother,’ but not in a manner that radiates the love she holds for this child. Rather, she seems to consider her attachment as something out of her control, but also irreversible. She knows this child as a reflection of herself: “The visage was so irksome in my sight; / Yet being mine own, at length affection would / Thy blemishes amend, if so I could” (10-12). The child’s image being ‘mine own’ could describe her motherly responsibility, but could also describe how she sees herself mirrored in the child. 

No matter what, her child’s existence reflects back on her. The speaker describes her tedious efforts to clean and polish their appearance: “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, / And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw. / I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet, / Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet” (13-16). She details her indelible sense of shame in the child’s flaws. Cleaning their face only reveals more ‘defects,’ and she attempts to literally mold their feet, though only further impairs their ability to run. The double meaning of ‘feet’ here, when thinking about poetic meter, also works really well when recalling that the child depicted here refers to a developing book. (see the footnote in Norton, 494). Ultimately, the disdainful portrayal of this child suggests the ingrained insecurities Bradstreet felt as a writer – especially as a female writer in the seventeenth century – releasing her work into the world.

Amoretti’s sonnet 54 portrays really interestingly the insecurity behind an artist’s inability to take criticism. I’m referring to the speaker as ‘he’ here, but don’t believe they necessarily have to be a man. The speaker begins by comparing this life he shares with another to a theater.  He relates his love – either the person who he loves, or his abstract feeling of love – to an audience member. The speaker writes of his love’s presence as secondary to his own, explaining that “Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay, / My love lyke the Spectator ydly sits” (1-2). This love watches from the outside as the speaker narrates his own story, and every story. The lines “Beholding me that all the pageants play, / Disguysing diversly my troubled wits” (3-4) reveal that the speaker plays every part, dictates every voice, and expresses every emotion. Conversely, his love remains a bystander, robbed of real autonomy in this unfolding story. If the speaker plays every part in the theater of their romance, the relationship he seems to refer to describes only his own self-obsession. He continues to perform alone, continuously disguising his true character and preventing his love from assuming an active role in the tale of their partnership. 

The speaker speaks of this person as his ‘love’, but also complains of her cruelty. He feels the contempt she holds for his acting, as “when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry / She laughs, and hardens evermore her hart” (11-12). She seems to not believe in, or care for, in the sincerity of his emotion. His crying seems comical to her, and for ‘evermore’ she withholds her sympathy. She lacks trust in him– and for good reason! He shows no concern for anything she may have to say. He asks, “What then can move her? if nor merth nor mone, / She is no woman, but a sencelesse stone.” (13-14); he cannot move her emotionally, and thus confirms she has no sense of humanity or womanhood. He now considers her a foolish variation of the most inanimate of objects: a stone. 

Rather than wondering if her failure to appreciate his performance may relate to the quality of his acting, he instead decides that she must be inherently stupid. In fourteen lines, he has professed his love, and compared that same love to a useless rock. He immediately invalidates criticism – even when it comes from those supposedly important to him – for he stays so sure of the perfection of his craft.