Month: October 2007

A few last words before I leave The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. First, as you probably realize if you’re a regular visitor, I tend to be fond of lyrical poems rather than long, epic poems. I got sucked into reading Robinson Jeffers’long poems by Dana Gioia’s argument that they were the best long poems written in the modern era. I can assure you that after reading all of Jeffers’ long poems and Nemerov’s “Endor” and “Cain” that Nemerov’s are far superior to Jeffers’.

That said, I wasn’t as impressed with “The Western Approaches (1975),” the last section in the collected poems, as I was with the sections that directly preceded it, which is not to say that there weren’t a few very good poems in it, like:

AGAIN

Again, great season, sing it through again
Before we fall asleep, sing the slow change
That makes October burn out red and gold
And color bleed into the world and die,
And butterflies among the fluttering leaves
Disguise themselves until the few last leaves
Spin to the ground or to the skimming streams
That carry them along until they sink,
And through the muted land, the nevergreen
Needles and mull and duff of the forest floor,
The wind go ashen, till one afternoon
The cold snow cloud comes down the intervale
Above the river on whose slow black flood
The few first flakes come hurrying in to drown.

Of course, I may have been more receptive to this poem because that’s precisely what’s happening around us. Still, it captures the transition between fall and winter nearly as beautifully as any poem I can remember, though he appears to be writing about more than just the transition between seasons of the year.

There is a joy in the Now that transcends the inevitable winter that awaits us all.

I’ve usually decided long before I finish a section of poetry which poem I’m going to end up discussing, but I almost always finish an entire section before I start to write so I don’t end up missing something that I’d rather write about.

As I read Nemerov’s “Gnomes and Occasions” 1973, I was sure that I would discuss a poem about butterflies that tied in beautifully with recent posts and my recent obsession. However, on the last page of the section I discovered:

BEGINNER’S GUIDE

They stand in the corner, on a shadowy shelf,
Field Books of This, Beginner’s Guide to That,
Remainders of an abdicated self
That wanted knowledge of no matter what.

Of flowers, was it? Every spring he’d tear
From their hiding-places, press and memorize
A dozen pale beginners of the year
That open almost among the melting snows,

And for a month thereafter rule his realm
Of small and few and homey in such minds
As his, until full summer came to whelm
Him under the flood and number of her kinds.

Or birds? At least the flowers would stand still
For amateurs, but these flighty alightings
Would not; and as he still refused to kill
In confirmation of his rarer sightings

The ornithologists were not his dish,
And he made do with sedentary birds
Who watched his watching as it were their wish
To check with Peterson, pictures and words.

And even so, before he got them straight
As like as not they’d not be there at all.
On the wings and wits God gave ’em they’d migrate;
“Confusing Fall Warblers” were, each Fall, his fall.

The world would not, nor he could not, stand still.
The longest life might be too short a one
To get by heart, in all its fine detail,
Earth’s billion changes swinging on the sun.

His last attempt he made upon the stars,
And was appalled, so many more of them
There were since boyhood that astronomers
Preferred a number to an ancient name.

And if, as The Beginner was advised
To do, he bought himself a telescope,
The host of stars that must be memorized
So mightily increased, he’d lose all hope.

Was it a waste, the time and the expense,
Buying the books, going into the field
To make some mind of what was only sense,
And show a profit on the year’s rich yield?

Though no authority on this theme either,
He would depose upon the whole that it
Was not. The world was always being wider
And deeper and wiser than his little wit,

But it felt good to know the hundred names
And say them, in the warm room, in the winter,
Drowsing and dozing over his trying times,
Still to this world its wondering beginner.

and knew that this poem had been waiting there since 1977 for me to discover it. Of course it was written for me. It describes my life to a “T.” It’s almost as if Nemerov had discovered my bookshelf and written a poem based on what he’d seen.

Even though I haven’t gotten to the astronomy books yet, I’ve glanced at the computer software more than once. I’ve covered everything else in the same order Nemerov discusses it in his poem. I can only assume that Nemerov must have been an INTP, as I am.

I even consider myself a “Beginner” in nearly everything I do; even when I know birds others don’t, I always point out I’m a “beginner,” not an expert on the topic. “The world was always being wider/ And deeper and wiser than his little wit.”

And I love it that way, can’t imagine it ever being any other way.

Even in the end, I look for beginnings.