Let's up the ante with Dante

The other day I made a timeline of major poets (about 17 pages long, I got carried away) and thought I'd focus on one of the earlier poets I placed on it: Dante. A 13th to 14th Century poet, Dante wrote so well that he is now known in Italym his home country, simply as Il Poeta. I have come across his Inferno before now while studying Paradise Lost, so it's time to look at a much shorter piece of writing, the poem,

There is a gentle thought
There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?'
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and desires.
His life, and all the strength that he can find,
from her sweet eyes are mercifully lent,
who feels compassion for our inner fires.’

This of course is a poem in translation. And I feel I hadn't covered a happy love poem in a while.

I love the personification of thought here. It is 'gentle' and yet has the joyous energy to 'spring', all because of love. And interestingly, it is thought that has power over the heart, not the typical reverse. Yet the mind is separate from thought, apparently, and so is still wary, fearing seduction. I suppose it is like intrusive thoughts that part of our minds would rather not consider.

Sometimes the commitment to love makes one feel as though other parts of life must be set aside, like the narrator's worry for his intellect. And then the greedy heart overrides these worries, concerend only with what love can 'bring'. And yet the two are joined in the last line with the possessive determiner 'our', showing that love unites the whole being eventually, not only joining two people as a couple.

Robert and his Graves

I have been reading a few of Robert Graves' poems recently. His name coincidentally chimes with many of his poems' subject matter from many different perspectives. I have even found an article on him titled 'The Haunted Mind', a very good read.

For today we shall look at 'The Cupboard', the entire message of which slips beyond my understanding, for now. Nevertheless I can feel the emotions he is trying to convey. After all, each person forms their own reading of any writing, and this is mine only.

Unfortunately I cannot find a print of the text which I can use here, so instead I shall provide a link to the poem on the Poetry Foundation website:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=14&issue=5&page=23

The most intriguing thing to me about this poem is the voices. Here we have a mother asking questions of a daughter. Not in the typical way that a mother asks her young child questions she already knows the answers to, but with persistent curiosity to a presumably adult woman, who appears to want children of her own now but for some reason cannot. That is my reading. From another perspective one could imagine that the daughter is perhaps young, but old enough to understand that when her mother has miscarried her to-be sibling, the trauma has deeply affected the older woman, leading the girl to try to hide any remembrance of it.

Within my interpretation, there are two imaginings of the mother: she is either mentally able, and therefore prying into her daughter's affairs; or she is ageing mentally with dementia or a disabling condition, and so is trying to recall what is in the cupboard for her own sake. I shall put forward my arguments for both these cases henceforth.

Concerning the first interpretation, we have the terms of address. By using 'Mary' to address her daughter, perhaps the mother is wanting to take control of her daughter's attention and remind her of her superior status as mother. It could be read aloud in a warning tone. After all, the mother has control over the name 'Mary' as she is the one who gave it.

Following this, we have the unequal address from Mary to the mother as 'Mother dear'. The latter endearment could be a pragmatic balm to soothe the inquisitive and domineering mother, who never offers that affection in return. The 'dear' augments to 'dearest' and 'mine', as if trying to put off her inquisitor, maybe even sarcastically. The fact that the final stanza ends this form of address and even ends the whole poem with a simple 'you' supports the theory that once the information has been withdrawn, the relationship's amicable façade breaks, and the daughter finally stands offensively rather than defensively with her own question, 'what's it to you?'.

My preferred reading is this: the mother is not able to remember that her daughter has been unable to have a baby, whether this is because she has not found the correct partner, or because she is physically unable, or even has had a miscarriage. Whatever the reason, the daughter has now both her personal worry and the worry of caring for her mother. For that reason she uses the terms of endearment sincerely, possibly feeling she has to remind her mother who she is in order for her to remember her in the long term. To me, this makes the poem all the more poignant when we reach the final line; the mother is so dependant on how the daughter perceives their world that 'the truth' could be anything said by Mary and the mother would believe it. Also, her harrowing experiences will not much upset the mother as perhaps she will forget the conversation in a few hours or even minutes.

In this poem, the focus on a standard household object highlights the domestic issues of our time. Why else would a cupboard be so important?

Hughes up next?

This week is the long-awaited poet, Ted Hughes. He has been a great influence upon modern poets and so I feel it is worth time to look at a longer poem than usual; I found 'Daffodils' but apparently I can only get a part of the poem. I shall have to do some more hunting for that one. Another that I like is this:

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stitches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

This poem is beautifully intimate without being explicit. It encapsulates the symmetry of husband and wife and how the physical connection aids the spiritual or mental one. The theme is giving and sharing - a marital theme. Both man and woman act in return to the other's act, showing their equality.

I am glad that the woman's 'fearfulness' recedes into 'perfection', for the tone would have become eerie if that emotion had been further pursued. What is slightly odd is the mechanical motif, with oil and steel depicting the scene. Perhaps the suggestion is that a marriage builds itself slowly, eventually creating a working machine that might need repairing from time to time but hopefully was built to last. Also, Hughes sees intercourse as a matching process, where specific parts are compatible with others, requiring them in order to function properly.

So marriage is about renewal, fitting two people together as they were made to be. Perhaps Hughes believed in soul mates, or maybe the 'new' parts show that anyone can make a marriage work, even against the odds.

More me poetry

This week I came across a poem I wrote a while back in the spur of the moment and thought that it's time to share it. It's short and sweet (I hope rather like me!) and doesn't' have a particularly interesting title, but I like to think it follows the vein of my favourite country-focused poems. I have just visited Cornwall and so it's been on my mind a lot.

Enjoy!

Rainy walk with a loved one

It's raining, muddied ground, chilly air

But we walk

Bitter cold of winter stinging hands

But we walk

Wind so strong you need one another's support

But we walk

Because whenever we walk this path, this track, this field,

We smile as if it were sunny

Like the last time.

Like the first time.

Edible Poetry

Today I baked three batches of yummy cooked goods, and feel inspired to cover a foody poem. And the one I have found has lines that strangely link in with last week's poem, noting how 'good night' is not always a pleasant notion. Also, I love the coincidence of the poet's name: Mary Lamb.

Breakfast

A dinner party, coffee, tea,
Sandwich, or supper, all may be
In their way pleasant. But to me
Not one of these deserves the praise
That welcomer of new-born days,
A breakfast, merits; ever giving
Cheerful notice we are living
Another day refreshed by sleep,
When its festival we keep.
Now although I would not slight
Those kindly words we use ‘Good night',
Yet parting words are words of sorrow,
And may not vie with sweet ‘Good Morrow',
With which again our friends we greet,
When in the breakfast-room we meet,
At the social table round,
Listening to the lively sound
Of those notes which never tire,
Of urn, or kettle on the fire.
Sleepy Robert never hears
Or urn, or kettle; he appears
When all have finished, one by one
Dropping off, and breakfast done.
Yet has he too his own pleasure,
His breakfast hour's his hour of leisure;
And, left alone, he reads or muses,
Or else in idle mood he uses
To sit and watch the venturous fly,
Where the sugar's piled high,
Clambering o'er the lumps so white,
Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

The main image in this poem is that breakfast is a rejuvenator, bringing a new beginning with each new day. The modifier 'new-born' is strongly emotive, connoting the bare purity which babies have and adults lack. Power is given to 'breakfast', as it is named 'the welcomer', and is personified to '[merit]' praise, again evoking the image of the benign child.

I perceived a sad yet relieved note in the section, 'we are living/ Another day'. It is broken up by enjambment and so I felt the slight pause imitated a sigh of relief that 'another day' has been given to the narrator. Ergo, I researched the poet's life and found she suffered with mental illness, which caused her to kill her mother, leading her to confinement. So the importance of breakfast is heightened in this case, as perhaps the thought of suicide, destitution or imprisonment was looming, and eating at leisure became a sign of safety for another few hours at least.

'Parting words are words of sorrow'. As I have mentioned, this chimes with Shelley's words a few decades before. The contrast of night and morning is highlighted with the rhyme to 'morrow'. This was a time of polite company, where one would stay with friends far longer than today, and so again the feeling of security is reinforced through the meeting in the 'breakfast-room'.

Even the servants ('Sleepy Robert') were given 'leisure' at breakfast. Then we drop further down the social scale to the 'fly', who is made akin to humans in the way that it enjoys breakfast in its own way, with a metaphorical 'cliff' symbolising human love of nature at the time also. Perhaps we are all, like animals, slaves to our appetites, but why not enjoy that fact as well as one can?