Colliding Worlds - Adrienne Rich and Henri Cole

“Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so. ”

—C. D. Wright

I love the intimacy of Adrienne Rich’s poetry, especially in the ways she invites the reader into her poems. The opening of “Shooting Script” brings the reader inside the poem by creating an image of conversation: “We were bound on the wheel of an endless conversation.” This complex metaphor indicates the reader and the language of the poem are situated in a conversation.

While the poem opens with a relational metaphor, the language of the poem shifts back and forth between isolation and conversation. The content of the poem creates a sense of movement by shifting between the ideas of dialogue verse monologue. Rich uses nature imagery such as the hermit penetrating a shell to contrast the themes of monologue and dialogue, inside and outside, isolation and community.

Each line of the poem hinges on the idea of an endless conversation established with the first line of the poem. Grammatically, the lines after the first full sentences are appositives that flesh out what exactly is this "endless conversation." The conversation is sometime intimate and effective like the relationship between the wave and the rock: “The wave changed instantly by the rock; the Rich changed by the wave retuning over and over.” The cyclical imagery appears again as the waves are described as endlessly returning to the rock.  

However, this endless conversation also incorporates moments of waiting. Rich uses the image of an empty shell to illustrate how waiting for monologue to become dialogue is part of the cycle of language: “Inside this shell, a tide waiting for someone to enter.” The inside of the shell is separate from whatever may enter to create the “wheel of endless conversation” (In this poem, the hermit crab is what enters to create dialogue). Throughout the poem, the shell is characterized by the way it waits for someone to enter its inner world. Rich compares the shell to “a monologue that waits for one listener.” These rich metaphors make this first poem is a perfect opening for “Shooting Script” as it captures the themes of language and inner and outer worlds that appear throughout the rest of the poems.

Henri Cole’s poem “Gravity and Center” uses an honest and intimate tone similar to Rich’s poetry. The speaker apologizes for not being able to say “I love you,” and struggles with his desire of the “inner and outer worlds to pierce one another, like a horse whipped by a man.” This desire is coupled with the desire of freedom and “the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond.” This poem captures the intense, yet impossible, desire of our inner feelings to commune with outer world, "the sound of water poured into a bowl." 

“Gravity and Center”

Henri Cole, 1956

I’m sorry I cannot say I love you when you say

you love me. The words, like moist fingers,

appear before me full of promise but then run away

to a narrow black room that is always dark,

where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold,

devouring the thing I feel. I want the force

of attraction to crush the force of repulsion

and my inner and outer worlds to pierce

one another, like a horse whipped by a man.

I don’t want words to sever me from reality.

I don’t want to need them. I want nothing

to reveal feeling but feeling—as in freedom,

or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,

or the sound of water poured into a bowl.

For extra fun:

Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Outer—from the Inner” also uses the image of a wheel as she writes about seeing the unseen.  

See also the poems by Lars Gustafsson to further explore this theme.

Let me just say - William Carlos Williams and Wendell Berry

I love the word just. It’s the word I use when I’m explaining something I still haven’t figured out. It’s the word I use when I don’t want to come off as the b-word (bossy).  It’s the word that does nothing, which is the reason why every writer will tell you not to use this word.

I was surprised to see this useless word appear in William’s poem “This is Just to Say.” Why would a famed imagiste use abstract filler words like just and this in his poetry?  In the poem, the speaker admits to eating someone else's plums and asks for forgiveness. Unlike the title (that acts as the first line of the poem) the confession is clear and shows no hesitation. The poem reads as if the speaker left a note on the kitchen table before leaving for the day. If the poem clearly explains the situation, then why include an imprecise title? 

I relate to the speaker, in that I can’t fully abandon the use of the word just. This idle word is a crutch of honesty. Just is a confession of vulnerability. It bares honesty while admitting a lack of confidence. Writers eliminate this word because they must be confident that language will carry the meaning. However, the vagueness of just and this within the title give the poem meaning. Somehow, Williams directly treats a moment of confession through imprecise language. The title sets a tone of uncertainty that contrast the certainty of the poem. This tonal conflict is created through the differing choice in language. The title offers some type of defense, perhaps born out of uncertainty, for the plum crime. The pairing of a vague title and concrete description nuances the emotion, and thus the meaning, of the poem. William’s experiments with the ways a “direct treatment of the thing” looks like by making hollow words create meaning. With little, empty words, the poem critiques, or perhaps more positively, revises imagism while operating within the poetic tradition.

While William Carlos William’s reevaluates the usefulness of language, Wendell Berry’s poetry commands a reevaluation of material value. The speaker of his poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” explores the negative consequences of loving material, monetary gain. Explicit imperatives structure the manifesto. The speaker encourages the reader to pursue a life of long-term investment with phrases such as: “Ask the questions that have no answers./ Invest in the millennium./ Plant sequoias.” Berry’s poem follows the manifesto tradition in giving explicit meaning and commands. With this form, the reader is offered a new perspective on living. While William’s poetry does not outline a philosophy of living for the reader, his poetry does offer new perspectives on the function of imaginative language.  

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made.

Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium.

Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion - put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn't go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

"Snap Back to Reality" - Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and Harryette Mullen's Negotiations

Reading Gertrude Sten’s Tender Buttons is like listening to a chatty two-year sincerely explain her feelings. The child is talking and taking and talking and nothing is making sense. But you smile, nod, and keep listening. As I nodded my way through Tender Buttons, I felt severely disconnected from the text. With “Patriarchal Poetry” I felt overwhelmed, frustrated, and even lost within the words. Yet, Stein almost leaves me with nothing in Tender Buttons.

To be fair, Stein’s writing made me chuckle as I envisioned bizarre foods such as: “light curls verse light curls have no more curliness than soup” (25). Yet I mostly struggled with conjuring images from her words.

Apparently “Chicken” deserves four entries in a row. Sometimes “Chicken” connects to my understanding of what chicken is, and then the next entry disrupts that reality with what seems like random words such as: “Alas a dirty word, alas a dirty third alas a dirty third, alas a dirty bird” (35). I struggled so much with this because sometimes I’m familiar with what Stein is writing about, and then she totally looses me in her repetition. I can’t disconnect my perceptions of reality from what Stein is writing.

I think Stein’s writing is trying to make me see chicken in another way, but I can’t un-see chicken as a feathered animal.

If anything, Tender Buttons pushes back at me as reader. I’m fairly certain the purpose of the poems involves making me as a reader feel uncomfortable and disconnected. But I’m not sure if there are moments of connection that I’m entirely missing. Cleary Stein’s writing insists on being re-read and re-re-read.

While not as difficult as Tender Buttons, Rae Armantrout’s poem “Negotiations” portrays life experiences as fluid and temporal. In the second section, the speaker recaps the transformation of The Little Mermaid, concluding “This meant that/everything’s negotiable/ and that everything is played out/ in advance/ in secret.” Armantrout’s poem shows how the impossible becomes the possible. Both Stein and Armantrout’s writing leave me with several questions: Does reality construct language? Or does language shape our perceptions and experiences with other objects? Can we rely on language to communicate individual perceptions to others?

“Negotiations”

Rae Armantrout

    1

The best part
is when we’re tired
of it all
in the same degree,

a fatigue we imagine
to be temporary,
and we lie near each other,
toes touching.

What’s done is done,
we don’t say,
to begin our transaction,

each letting go of something
without really
bringing it to mind

until we’re lighter,
sicker,
older

and a current
runs between us
where our toes touch.

It feels unconditional.

    2

Remember this, we don’t say:

The Little Mermaid
was able to absorb
her tail,

refashion it
to form legs.

This meant that
everything’s negotiable

and that everything is played out
in advance

in secret