Month: February 2002

Yeats’ Heart and Soul

Originally I had planned on discussing Yeats’ “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” but quickly realized that there was far more symbolism in that poem than I was willing to discuss in a single day. Instead, I turned to the Yeats’ poem I have loved the longest, one that, like “A Dialogue of Self and Soul,” includes the theme of transcendence:

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.

This poem is part of “Words for Music Perhaps,” a sequence of twenty-five poems focused on Crazy Jane, who ain’t quite as crazy as The Bishop would have you believe. The first poem in the sequence, “Crazy Jane and the Bishop,” provides important background to this poem. In that poem the Bishop had banished Jane’s lover Jack the Journeyman because he was a “coxcomb.” Jane’s retorts that the bishop Jack stood straight as a birch tree while the Bishop had “heron’s hunch upon his back” though, implying that Jack was certainly more of a man than the Bishop could ever hope to be.

Years later, the Bishop meets Crazy Jane on the road and argues that now that she’s old and about to die, she must surely be ready to give up lustful desire, that “foul sty,” and live in God’s holy mansion. It’s understandable, he implies, that a young person could be overcome by desire, but surely an older person will be ready to give up bodily desire for the chance of an everlasting life in heaven.

Not Crazy Jane, though, for she believes that “fair and foul are near of kin.” Life can’t be devoted just to the soul or just to the body. There’s no denying that her friends have died, but they, unlike the Bishop, knew all of life, both “bodily lowliness” and “the heart’s pride.” To prove her point, Crazy Jane points out that Love fulfills itself with precisely the bodily organs that rid the body of wastes.

God himself has ordained it by the very way he has designed mankind. In the end, nothing can be “sole or whole” that has not been first torn apart or suffered. Bodily suffering is an essential part of life and is our only hope for true salvation. The body represents the passion that is so essential in Yeats’ philosophy.

You Gotta Do More than Read

It’s Presidents Day here in the states, so I spent most of the day cross country skiing with Leslie and my daughter’s family. Turns out not all of the 40 pounds I lost in the last two months was fat. I was having trouble keeping up with my daugher who was carrying a 35 pound Gavin, which means I have a lot of conditioning in the next few weeks if I’m going to be backpacking this summer. But it felt great to get back to the mountains for the first time. I’m ready to go again this week, providing the rain backs off.

I would have had some great photos today if I hadn’t forgotten the digital camera that I recharged last night. There’s something about the first ski trip of the year; last year I left my raincoat home the first day, not a good thing in the Pacific Northwest. Still, it’s not as bad as the day I forgot my hiking boots on a trip and had to hike half way up Mt . Hood with my sandals. People looked at me a little wierdly, but I said if the Romans could conquer Europe with sandals I ought to be able to pull off a hike up Mt. Hood. Some people tell me this forgetfulness is a sign of old age, but I prefer that to being accused of being an absent-minded professor. Personally, I think forgetting little things is just a sign of trying to do more than most people.

I should have time for a short entry on Yeats tomorrow, then I’ll be back on schedule Wednesday when my daughter’s family leaves for home.

Bruce Weigl is More than Just a War Poet

Luckily I had read several poems by Bruce Weigl in an anthology of 90’s poets before I read on the internet that he is often classified as a Vietnam War poet. Despite the fact that I served there about the same time he did, I generally avoid writers who write about the war.

Although I consider combat duty a crucible of the human soul, I’m not interested in dwelling on the past. It’s what we bring forward from the past, the character that has been forged through adversity, that is truly important.

Judging from the five poems included in this anthology, Weigl has gained new insights into himself and into human nature from his life experiences. Though “What Saves Us” has a reference to Vietnam, the poem has much more to do with “love” than it does war:

What Saves Us

We are wrapped around each other in
the back of my father’s car parked
in the empty lot of the high school
of our failures, the sweat on her neck
like oil. The next morning I would leave
for the war and I thought I had something
coming for that, I thought to myself
that I would not die never having
been inside her long body. I pulled
her skirt above her waist like an umbrella
inside out by the storm. I pulled
her cotton panties up as high as
she could stand. I was on fire. Heaven
was in sight. We were drowning on our
tongues and I tried to tear my pants off
when she stopped so suddenly
we were surrounded only by my shuddering
and by the school bells grinding in the
empty halls. She reached to find something,
a silver crucifix on a silver
chain, the tiny savior’s head hanging
and stakes through his hands and his feet.
She put it around my neck and held
me so long the black wings of my heart
were calmed. We are not always right
about what we think will save us.
I thought that dragging the angel down would
save me, but instead I carried the crucifix
in my pocket and rubbed it on my
face and lips nights the rockets roared in.

People die sometimes so near you
you feel them struggling to cross over,
the deep untangling, of one body from another.

In some ways the narrator almost seems like the stereotypical Vietnam soldier, young, barely a high school graduate, impatient. The phrase “the empty lot of the high school of our failures” probably aptly describes his life to this point. Like most young soldiers, he thinks of life in immediate, physical terms.

Luckily, for both the narrator and the reader, a unique moment takes place in the poem when the girl pulls out a crucifix and gives it to the narrator. The savior with “stakes through his hands and feet” seems an appropriate symbol for what the narrator will shortly have to endure when the rockets roar in. The amazingly powerful image of the “black wings of my heart were calmed” provides a powerful contrast to the image of the savior and the “angel” who he wanted to drag down to save himself. Those of us who have lived awhile, as well as those of us who fought in Vietnam, would certainly agree that “We are not always right/ about what we think will save us.”

But what really transforms this from a “war” poem to a “life” poem is the last three lines. Anyone who has experienced the death of someone close understands “the deep untangling, of one body from another” that must be done before we can move on in life.

In “The Confusion of Planes We Must Wander in Sleep” the narrator describes a humiliating childhood experience that helps him become a good parent:

The Confusion of Planes We Must Wander in Sleep

I stood naked in the corner as my mother

changed the wet sheets and clucked her tongue though spoke

as kindly as she could, my,father stirring angrily

in the bed across the hall. Lost, my legs sheened in piss

I stumbled, drugged with the kind of grieving

children practice to survive. I was apart from

the cold and the heavy smell. I was not attached

to the world though I followed my young and weary

mother into the timeless dark,

and tonight I

pull my own son’s blankets back and speak to him:

how nice a dry bed will be, how good to get up

without a fuss and go. I lift him to stand, his

penis a wand waving its way magically

before us, and something makes sense for once in my head,

the way that what we pass on is not always a gift,

not always grace or strength or music, but sometimes

a burden and that we have no choice but to live as

hard as we can inside the storm of our years and

that even the weaknesses are a kind of beauty

for the way they bind us into what love, finally, must be.

Bruce Weigl in New American Poets of the 90’s

Although there’s no direct condemnation of the parents’ handling of the bed-wetting incident, there are certainly hints of long-term negative effects. The narrator stands “naked” his “legs sheened in piss,” suffering the “kind of grieving children practice to survive” as he and his mother head into the “timeless dark.” It is not an abusive relationship, but it is anything but positive.

Thankfully, the narrator does a much better job than his parents did of dealing with his son’s bedwetting, emphasizing the positives of not wetting the bed rather than shaming the child. The narrator realizes that what we pass on to others may be not a blessing but a “burden,” but we have no choice but to live as well as we can “inside he storm of our years.” However, even this can “bind us to what we love.” True love is based on shared joys and shared “burdens.” Love that cannot survive burdens is not love at all.

Five poems are hardly enough to judge a poet by, but I put one of Weigl’s books on my wish list at Amazon.

There are a number of on-line resources.

Two poems are presented here.

The poem "Rapture" is reprinted here.

Love Calls Us to the Things of the World

When considering poems appropiate for Valentine’s day, my thoughts first turned to Richard Wilbur’s powerful “Love Calls Us to the Things of the World” because of the title. However, a closer review revealed it isn’t really about romantic love, that staple of Valentine’s Day. Instead, it’s about a far deeper love, the love of the physical world, the love of life as lived here on earth.

Wilbur’s use of conceits is reminiscent of my favorite metaphysical poets, while his use of the “pulleys” in the first line reminded me of Herbert’s poem “The Pulley.” Like the metaphysical poets, Wilbur combines humor and seriousness to create a complex poem that reflects our own contradictory view of the relationship between the soul and our body:

Love Calls Us to the Things of the World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.

Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.’

Like the awakened sleeper in the poem, it took me a minute to realize exactly what Wilbur is describing at the beginning of this poem. Because the soul is freed from the body at night, when the body is startled awake in the morning, the soul sees itself, and other souls, floating in the air.

Though this appears to be just laundry hanging on a line outside the window, the narrator assures us “truly there they are,” filling whatever they are wearing “with the deep joy of their impersonal breathing,” impersonal because the soul, in its natural state, lives a calm, meditative existence, not the passionate life of the body.

Returning to the body, the soul “shrinks from the punctual rape of every blessed day,” because to the soul’s “impersonal breathing” any bodily activity must seem like rape. Still, the soul sees each day as a “blessed day,” hardly a term I would use to describe “rape.” The soul wishes there would be nothing on earth but “laundry,” unsoiled souls, repentant hands trying to wash the stains away, and a celebration of heaven.

Still, the soul descends with the warm sunshine in “bitter love.” Bitter because the soul knows that man must invariably sin, but still with love because the soul is drawn to the passion that only the body can truly feel and express. The souls descend from their angelic heights to the backs of both “thieves” and lovers who daily go forth to lose their innocence. Even the “saintly,” the nuns walking around with bad habits, like all of us, are trying to strike the difficult balance between the needs of the soul and the desires of the body.

Wilbur’s delightful poem celebrates the joy we all find in our bodies while still trying to stay true to our soul, that difficult line we all find so hard to walk while intoxicated with life.