A Distraction

COMMENTS from Alyssa!

(Apologies to Alyssa, who has had trouble commenting directly on the Blog--Alyssa, thank you!)

[This is a reply to Emily Fu’s comment on Week 1 Poem 1]


I love that you mention the way E.D. uses “anchored” to describe the petal on her dress. I think the expected descriptor would be “stuck,” so this is a really incredible moment of imagery. In those lines:

I put new Blossoms in the Glass —

And throw the old — away —

I push a petal from my Gown

That anchored there — I weigh

E.D. moves from the very quick-paced--flowers that die regularly and get replaced almost mechanically--to the slowing down of time with the words “anchored” and “weigh,” words which are slow to read as well as processes that describe permanence.

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[This is a general comment on Week 1 Poem 1]

I find it particularly interesting that E.D. enumerates multiple genders in this poem, in the lines “We cannot put Ourself away/ As a completed Man/ Or Woman —.” Normally, she does not shy away from using any single gendered term for everyone—or for herself—so the clarification of both “Man” and “Woman” is unusual here. She must be naming different roles, rather than genders; I think of the concept of “the wife” that we are talking about for next week. Here, however, it’s hard to tell what the difference in roles is here—there must be a difference, or else she wouldn’t write both “man” and “woman.” Does “completed” modify just “man” or “woman” also? And why is “Ourself” singular when it refers to both? Perhaps this is another instance of E.D. portraying herself as an androgynous presence, fulfilling both the man’s and the “wife’s” roles.

Otherwise, this poem is so apt for this moment, as many people have already said. The lines “But since we got a Bomb —/ And held it in our Bosom —/ Nay — Hold it — it is calm” is so impactful. The word “bomb” has its etymology in ancient Greek, but it sounds like an Anglo-Saxon/Germanic word to me (like “womb”). Anyway, the sound of “Bomb” with the powerfully conceptual capital B is just a perfect double whammy. Not to mention the bomb/calm slant rhyme. I wonder what Emily’s Bomb was? I certainly know ours….

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[For Week 1 Poem 2]

This is such a grim poem, it gave me chills to read it just now. I am starting to understand the greater fragility of life that comes from plague times—or any time when people are apt to die from disease and there’s not much medicine can do about it. That fragility was certainly present in E.D.’s life, and for most of human history. In fact, up until now this generation has almost been the only exception to the rule of occasional, random early death.

I love Emily’s use of the word “Trinket”—she uses it often in poems. It’s such a twee, feminine, frilly concept, but the word itself breaks into two rather sharp pieces. The etymology of the word is unknown, from the 1530s—quite the mystery! However, it may be a diminutive form of “trick.” As is Emily!

On the “Degreeless Noon”: this feels similar to E.D.’s “Zero” and “White” or “White Heat”—I love her descriptions of utter and complete saturation (of emotion, concept, power, etc.). She often pairs these with hot or cold, such as the “cool — concernless No —“ in line 13.

Do you suppose the “Him —” in the final line is God? I think there’s room for multiple interpretations.

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[For Week 1 Poem 3]

The hidden riddle in the “sum” is very interesting here—I’m not sure what to make of it. You suggest in your commentary that the final stanza refers to Emily thinking about herself surviving and others dying—I had a different interpretation. What if she is imagining “Themself [the others], should come to me — [visit her plot in the graveyard]” at around this same time in a future year? In that way, this poem becomes akin to those in which she grapples with her legacy. I would be interested to know what other people think!

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[For Week 1 Poem 4]

As someone who experiences “winter blues” and always longs for summer, this poem used to be incomprehensible to me! Normally, E.D. seems to share my love of spring and summer and to struggle with winter, so this poem seems unlike her. But Lois, your comment makes so much sense to me, and reminds me of a poem that gave me some comfort two Aprils ago, when my beloved grandmother was dying and I was caring for her in hospice:

When I Am Asked

BY LISEL MUELLER

When I am asked   

how I began writing poems,   

I talk about the indifference of nature.   

It was soon after my mother died,   

a brilliant June day,   

everything blooming.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

in a lovingly planted garden,   

but the day lilies were as deaf   

as the ears of drunken sleepers   

and the roses curved inward.   

Nothing was black or broken   

and not a leaf fell   

and the sun blared endless commercials   

for summer holidays.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

ringed with the ingenue faces   

of pink and white impatiens   

and placed my grief   

in the mouth of language,   

the only thing that would grieve with me.

Margaret: I love your expansion on the Cavalry theme. I wish I knew more about Christianity, as I am always missing literary allusions to the Bible stories. The Twelfth Night connection is clever too!

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[For Week 1 Poem 5]

I am so impressed my E.D.’s iambic meter here! Each stanza follows:

Iambic trimeter

Iambic trimeter

Iambic tetrameter

Iambic trimeter

Does this meter/structure have a name? I only know it from “The Farmer and the Dell” and other nursery rhymes.

At any rate, it is one of the most regular meters I’ve seen in her poems. As a poet who has a dreadful time maintaining a consistent rhyme, let alone a meter, I am always in awe of poets who can do so without sacrificing meaning or image. The iambs also ensure that we read “content” as the emotion of contentment, rather than the “content” as in “the contents of the box”—very clever!

I never knew this “Light” until I travelled first to England and then to Boston. The part of California where I am from is much more Equatorial, so the only slanted light I ever see is at sunset. But in Boston, there is a light in spring “Not present on the Year/ At any other period —/ When March is scarcely here. “It is such a fragile thing; I think E.D. describes it perfectly.

I can’t help but wonder if Robert Frost’s 1923 poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a kind of knockoff, or if he simply noticed the same New England-y phenomenon in a similar way. Certainly, Emily holds the prize for language and meter, although they both capture the sense of bereavement of losing that fragile early light to “Noons.”

Nothing Gold Can Stay

BY ROBERT FROST

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

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