Mysteries of poems

I don't normally comment on other people's poems on this blog, and I doubt that this post will be the beginning of a trend....  However, I came across a poem the other day by a poet previously unknown to me, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and I made some notes on Evernote about it. The poem appealed in some way I couldn't put my finger on initially, and yet strictly speaking I couldn't make much sense of it.  I've written a few poems of my own that didn't make much 'sense' either, because basically they were collage poems, or 'found' poems (words taken from somewhere else and 'formed' into a poem) - examples: Twitter Collage Poem, Zen Poem, and Evernote Collage 2.  So I can't in any way criticize other poets who write in a surreal sort of way. However, I thought I'd review the notes I wrote and add them here, as a way of reflecting further on the poem. 

Here's the poem, which Ms Kane has very kindly given me permission to reproduce. 

Mysteries of Light

Joan Naviyuk Kane
       

Loosen the ropes.
Seven lances in her heart put forth blossoms.

Beneath a torrent, refuge—
As a little child with a medallion of chased gold

Aboard a ship, with birds
About her shoulder and a magpie on her hand.

An axe lodged in the roof,
A wolf whose mouth will proclaim.

One breast on a plate. Stone in hand.
Red egg, wool, sometimes a wound in her forehead.

Called to the ditches alongside the mine roads,
A continuation of things we do wrong.

Already, coming back to it, I see I've misread something in it. This is the advantage of taking time over a poem. You begin to see what the writer actually said rather than what you think they said. This is why it's good to memorize poems: you get behind the apparent facade and discover more of the house inside.

Nevertheless, be aware that these notes are fairly bitsy, hardly what you'd call a concerted critical opinion. 

Firstly, a poem like this leaves the readers to do most of the work, leaves them to find meanings and connections. This isn't to say there isn't any meaning intended by the author, just that the author hasn't plainly set the meaning out for the reader to see. It's a bit like a cryptic crossword: you have to learn to read the clues the way the compiler intended them before you can begin to work out the answer.

So what do readers do with a poem like this? If they're already of a poetic bent, I guess they get on and try to discover the meaning(s), or, maybe more likely, find the meaning slipping away from them just when they think they've grasped it!  If the reader is a person struggling with poetry, then this sort of poem may put them off...unless they happen to 'get' something about it. I guess this is part of what happens when we collide with a poem, especially a poem like this where everything seems to be set in place for a reason yet the reason isn't obvious. Even the title appears to have no connection to the rest of the poem. 

The first stanza has a kind of sense, but apart from the assonance of 'loosen' and 'blossoms' what do the two lines have to do with each other? Does the reader decide? Are there clues from the author?  Is the woman with the heart someone who appears elsewhere in the poem?

The second stanza starts with a seeming paradox, a kind of variation on the calm inside the storm. But while that latter phrase speaks of a real thing, this torrent/refuge idea takes a bit of thinking about. Under what torrent could you find a refuge? I guess a refuge from other circumstances, or other troubles. 

When I re-read the poem again just now, I realised the fourth line moves on into the fifth and sixth. I don't know that I'd ever heard the expression 'chased gold' until now. Seemingly it means this: Chased gold is a sheet of gold on which patterns have been cut. If artistic and beautiful designs are cut or indented on metals like gold or silver, they are chased.

Okay, that's a clearer picture, though how does the child with the medallion aboard ship, amongst birds, connect to the refuge beneath the torrent?  This is where a proper critic would probably bring up all sorts of references that I'm missing, and I would go, Oh. That's what that phrase refers to. The proper critic, however, is apparently on annual leave, and hasn't taken his cellphone or laptop, so I'll have to rely on my own limited thoughts here.

Apart from the meaning of the third stanza, there's a nice assonance between the phrases 'aboard the ship' and 'about her shoulder.'  There's a surreal feel to this picture, as though suddenly Salvador Dali or Magritte had climbed up the rope ladder into the poem and hung up some of their typical surrealist props. Birds about the shoulders almost brings in a Madonna-like picture, but who does the magpie belong to?

Initially, in relation to the next stanza, I wrote: an axe lodged in a roof is a phrase that has a sense of violence about it, a contrast to the previous birds imagery. But why does the wolf have a mouth that will proclaim, and anyway, who invited him in?  Could the axe and the wolf be indicative in any way of the 'torrent' that the woman needs to take refuge from?  

Okay, the one breast on a plate in the fifth stanza is an interesting image; if a reality, then where's the other breast? (Forgive me if this sounds facetious.) Is the woman leaning on the table, one breast on the plate, one on something else? Is she so bound up in her thoughts she doesn't realise quite where she's placed herself?

Again these next lines are what I wrote as my first impressions....you can see I'm not quite drowning, but the life jacket doesn't seem to be properly in place either. Stone in hand? This is the first of several concrete images that seem not to have any connection - 'red egg?' - what's a red egg? - red inside an egg might signify something to do with insemination, conception, etc, but 'wool?' - that seems very random, except for the way it's echoed by 'wound.' Stone, hand, wound, forehead, all have connecting consonants, but...what's their connecting meaning? 

And lastly: who's called? To do what? And how is this a continuation of anything, let alone what we do wrong?  

You can see that I'm plainly no literary/poetic critic.  I'm plugging along here pretending that I'm getting somewhere but feeling more than a little lost.  This isn't Ms Kane's fault in the slightest. While I've quibbled in the past about poems such as this that seem random (to me), I've slowly, over the years, mostly found ways to get to grips with them. That doesn't mean to say I've got to grips with them in the same way the poet intended (!) but perhaps that isn't the point. An abstract painting may speak differently to different people, and it's unlikely the artist is going to complain. An art critic may find all sorts of things in that painting that the average Joe won't necessarily see - or maybe even want to see. As long as the work speaks in some measure to them, that should be enough for the artist. For composers it's even worse/better: the majority of serious compositions have no programme, no intention except to be music. I guess there are some composers who set out to write something that says this at this point and that at that. My suspicion is that many composers 'merely' write, and let the music do its own thing with its audience. Which it will.

One last thought. It sometimes helps to know something about the author of a poem, about their circumstances, what their passions are. The link under Ms Kane's name leads to an interview with her. It may well help in the reading of this poem.

Small

Small

Small dogs are made to fill the

hollow behind your knees,

the crook formed when you’re

lying down having an afternoon nap.

Small children are made to

lie against your chest, ribs,

midriff, lap, held in the arms,

relaxed, softly snoring.

A dog behind the knees, back to

back; a child asleep in front, both

bodies to body adapting, both

asleep, sotto voce breathing.

The reading of poetry begets more poetry

The reading of poetry begets more poetry – Billy Collins

When I write poetry the words tumble out at a rate of knots,
bumbling over each other, each keen to be stepping into place,
and I tell them it's not a race, that there's no prize for being first,
because anyway, the first word is always first and the later words are
later, unless of course I jumble them into some different order, like
words on a refrigerator door sitting waiting to be sorted into
something that makes some sort of sense, though often humorists
will come by and replace the sensible with the surreal, like
aimless iPods sitting by dancing kisses, instead of man photographs
woman screaming. As poetry it's not ideal though it has a kind of
counterintuitive subconscious feel.

                                                            When Richard Wilbur writes,
I read, he writes one apt line at a time, each one polished before the
next steps into line. Billy Collins tells me that typing a few words at a
time is the best way to work anyway. I apply this regime with great
vigour, except that when it comes to the point of writing a poem, the
shuffling words don't stand waiting in a queue, like derelict street
people at a soup kitchen, passive, subdued by the pressure of just
making it through the day; rather they surround the helicopter of the
poem like men and women fresh from the terrors of the latest
tornado, people so cut off from the rest of the world that a box
tossed from the sky is literal manna from Heaven, and all good
manners and polite behaviours are pushed aside in the
jostle for something from the providers, the once-a-day
deliverers, the sun-shaded sun-screened Red Cross or
UNICEF or World Vision aid workers, who, hearts afire,
struggle to see these faces individually.

                                                                        See, this is what
happens. The poem was never supposed to bring in people
sleeping on the street, or struggling to feed themselves, or
helicopters flushing out a space in the bush, threshing the
grasses and swishing up leaves and pushing the trees out in a
wider circle. The poem was supposed to mention a little about
words rushing rather than me shushing them, it was supposed to
show that good ideas need space and pressing them down at a
ridiculous pace on the face of an iPad is counterproductive to
properly-formed poems. Yes, I'd agree, but the words in my head
don't heed and come like a young husband on his honeymoon night. 

Leaving the house

There's been something of a hiatus on here in terms of posts. It's not that I haven't been writing poems, because I have. Once you start writing poems there's no stopping; they come out of mid-air, often, and you write them down, intending to come back to them when you've got a minute. Sometimes the minutes never appear. 
Anyway, here's one that's made it off the back-burner. 

Leaving the house

Going out,

leaving the house

shut up in the sticky

heat, seems sadistic,

like stifling someone,

forcing them down

on a bed, smothering

them under a pillow.

 

Lethal Injection

‘While you’re waiting we can take your height and weight, and your blood pressure.’

I’ve just received the flu vax.  No sensation, no queasiness, as usual, and a wait of twenty minutes out by reception seems a bit pointless.

‘Well, my height won’t have changed.’  For some reason I’m feeling grumpy.

‘We don’t actually have your height on our records.’  Of course -  I’ve only attended this Health Centre for a couple of years.  The nurse’s voice hints that patients ought not to query things.  I ignore it.  She has a smile on, impersonal.  I get the impression that if it was within her jurisdiction she would prefer to give me a lethal injection rather than a vaccination. 

Grumpy.  I need to shake off something: nerves, an odd having-my-grave-walked-over sensation.  The night before, driving to a rehearsal for a play, I breathed in while eating a hard-boiled sweet.  The sweet stayed in my cheek, but some combination of mucus and saliva glued across my windpipe.  I lost the ability to draw breath.  I pulled over.  I thought how strange it would be to be found in a car, sitting upright, not breathing, eyes wide open.  I thought about how annoyed the people at the rehearsal would be at my unexplained absence.  I realised I didn’t have my cellphone on me, and even if I had had, trying to breathe was more important than making a final call.  I thought: this is a horrible way to die.

My brain fiddled with these thoughts, my chest cracked open in an attempt to find air.  No air.  Out of my experience.  

Cough!  Cough!

I forced myself to cough.  The mucus mixture broke.   Life returned to a post-possible-death normality.   

I don’t need a lethal injection.  I can die on my own, quite comfortably, thanks.