Month: November 2003

Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers”

Stanley Kunitz, an American poet, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, named Poet Laureate in 2000, speaks of age, observant of its changes.

His poem, “The Layers” offers his observations of the steps and turns in a life lived thoughtfully, engaging in its twists, a life not left willingly at any age. “The Layers” speaks to the mature reader.

Some observations:

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

Who among us with a few years behind us is not aware of her own existence and the sharing of it with those we have created and with those we have chosen to live with. My children, parents, ancestors, husband, and friends have molded me and yet a core of me is unique, my own self, present at my creation to which I cling, “from which I struggle not to stray,” demanding recognition for me. Egocentric? Good.

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.

If we are smart, we learn from our past, observe our mistakes, build our talents. My reality now in my sixth decade is that I, like the speaker in the poem, have fewer milestones ahead of me. There are many abandoned camp-sites behind me.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?

Many affections, loves scattered–a feast of losses, a phrase profound in the recognition of a life lived with emotion.

In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

I’ve lost track of a few friends whom I often think of and would like to speak to again. That’s the nature of moving every two or three years over a period of 26 years. I am occasionally impressed with my will “to go wherever I need to go, but to be honest, I haven’t yet found “every stone on the road precious…”

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”

Ah, words to live by. “Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Realistic optimism with a tough of fatalism–now that appeals to me.

Diane McCormick

Warren’s “Uncollected Poems 1943- 1989”

My favorite poem in Warren’s “Uncollected Poems 1943- 1989” is actually “Bicentennial,” a 12 page poem that ends with a celebration of the freedoms the founding fathers have given us: “Even so, we should not forget the virtues of the old ones who/ Backs to a dark continent, stood and set us free from tyranny” Of course, he follows these inspirational lines with the chilling reminder that we have not done much with this freedom: “They did not get around to setting us free from ourselves.” Unfortunately, at the moment I have neither the patience nor the determination needed to discuss that poem in any depth.

That said, though, I’m also quite fond of “Lord Jesus, I Wonder,” a sobering, ironic poem that manages to capture Warren’s spiritual ambivalence:

LORD JESUS, I WONDER

Lord Jesus, I wonder if I would recognize you
On the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second-

Just one more glaze-eyed, yammering bum, nobody to listen
But the halt and maimed. My legs are good.

Yet sometimes I’ve thought of you, sandaled on sand,
Or stub-toed in gravel, dried blood black on a toe-nail,

And you seemed to look beyond traffic, then back with an innocent
Smile, to ask a revealing question

To which I could find no answer. But I suddenly smell
The sweat-putrid mob crowding closer, in pain and emptiness, ready

To believe anything-ignorant bastards. I envy them. Except
Their diseases, of course. For my head roars

With information, true or false, till I feel like weeping
At the garish idiocy of a Sunday School card. At fourteen,

I was arrogantly wrapped up in Darwin, but felt, sometimes,
Despair because I could not love God, nor even know his address.

How about this? God, c/o Heaven-Special Delivery? Well,
The letter was returned: Addressee Unknown. So

I laughed till I vomited. Then laughed again, this time
At the wonder of the world, from dawn to dark, and all

Night long, while stars spoke wisdom in battalions of brilliance.
Sometimes, since then, I have, face up, walked a night road,

Still adolescent enough to seek words for what was in my heart,
Or gut. But words, I at last decided, are their own truth.

There is no use to continue this conversation. We all
Know that. But, for God’s sake, look the next blind man you meet

Straight in the eye. Do not flinch at prune-shriveled socket, or
Blurred eyeball. Not that you have

The gift of healing. You will not heal him, but
You may do something to heal something within yourself.

I, too, have sometimes wondered, like many people I suspect, if I would recognize a Savior if I saw him preaching on the streets. Or would I, like Warren, see him as just another charlatan telling ignorant people what they want to hear? Would I consider myself too “wise” to listen to some street-corner preacher and miss the opportunity for real salvation?

Perhaps it is a sense or intellectual superiority that makes it difficult to blindly believe everything your told in church. Certainly rational thought, in this case symbolized by Darwin, makes it difficult to accept the concept of God. Unfortunately, that rationality doesn’t prevent you from feeling a sense of despair at having to make all your own choices in life. Even those incapable of believing in a traditional God often find themselves wanting to believe in Him.

No matter how intelligent we think we are, though, it’s difficult to experience the wonders of the universe without believing in our heart that there is something there beyond us. That magical universe is represented by the stars in this poem as it is in several of Warren’s poems.

Doubter though he may be, Warren still seems to have absorbed and accepted Christ’s message to us, for his advice to “look the next blind man you meet/ Straight in the eye” seems to suggest the kind of Christian compassion, empathy, that one should expect from a Christian, not because it will help the blind person but because it may heal something within yourself.

There is something within us that needs a compassionate, forgiving God, even if, in the end, we must gain that compassion from truly looking each other in the eyes and seeing our condition for what it is.