Poems

Re: spells and charms

Maria Padhila — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:49:24 GMT

*lurker surfaces*
It's funny that in the discussion, a woman's poem wasn't the first cited, because I bet we use "witchy" incantatory devices most often...and traditionally our roles have put us in closer and longer proximity to nursery rhymes. Sexton and Plath are the first accused that come to my mind ("and my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack") but Dorothy Parker (hell yeah I'll put her in such company) is the biggest offender.

But that observation is terribly sexist of me, isn't it. ;)

BTW this may be against the rules, but I'm doing poems for charity over at my blog; write a poem and I donate a dollar (this year, to Appalachian Trail maintenance). Drain my resources: capitolcougar.blogspot.com.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

Robert Pinsky — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:40:48 GMT

Mark's description of the two poems seems accurate to me. As I remember the story as Stanley Kunitz tells it, after an explicitly, candidly anti-semitic rejection at Harvard-- he was the shining star undergraduate English major there, seemed sure to get a teaching fellowship, was bewildered that his name wasn't on the list, then his advisor told him with a chuckle that of course Harvard students wouldn't want to be taught English by a Jew, cldn't he forsee that?-- Stanley vowed never to teach again, or go near an English Department.

But many years later, when Roethke was getting sick, teaching at Bennington, he told the Bennington people they should hire Stanley Kunitz to take over his courses. And that's how Kunitz began teaching, after all.

A n encouraging story about these two quite different people, and poets.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

MaryAnn — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:02:24 GMT

I'm always curious how much this is a formal choice (the poet selecting a technique that's appropriate to the material at hand) and how much it's a function of character, an expression of a way of seeing the world.

Interesting comment, Mark, considering what I have read of the bios of Kunitz and Roethke.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

Mark Doty — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:31:47 GMT

That's true, Eric, and Stanley and Roethke were close friends and poetic comrades, too. It's interesting to feel how different the position of the speakers is in these two poems. "The Portrait," despite that stinging slap at the end, is relatively calm in its method of narration, reporting an experience that reverberates throughout the speaker's life. The Roethke poem has that galumphing, insistent rhythm that seems to put us inside the small boy's body, less in control than Kunitz is.

I'm always curious how much this is a formal choice (the poet selecting a technique that's appropriate to the material at hand) and how much it's a function of character, an expression of a way of seeing the world.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

Eric Edits — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:20:25 GMT

And yet I've always felt a strong connection between "My Papa's Waltz" and Kunitz's "The Portrait," maybe because they both deal with the complexities parental relationships.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

MaryAnn — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:24:47 GMT

I wonder if it's that our era values the self-examination of Bishop and Lowell over what I'd call Roethkean enactment.

Rather, Mark, I think it's what you mention later --

Do we feel better about experience considered and mediated in poetry than we do about the kind of weird psychic drama of Roethke's slippery roots and strange little songs about rats and the underlife?

I don't know if we readers feel better, but we do feel more comfortable with, say, Kunitz.

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

Mark Doty — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:38 GMT

Robert is right, I made a new poem in the blurry depths of my memory out of "The Waking" and "My Papa's Waltz," and now that I think about it this seems to me something of a worthy project! At least to daydream about.

And Cutter is right, too, in noting that Roethke's reputation hasn't fared as well as some; I'm not sure just what his readership is among younger poets just now, whereas you can be sure that references to any number of other poets active in the Fifties will be recognized. I wonder if it's that our era values the self-examination of Bishop and Lowell over what I'd call Roethkean enactment. "The Waking," for instance, like many of Roethke's best poems, is a dance, and it give us the feel of a body swaying in trance, enchanted by its own vision, giving voice to a state of mind that resists the analytical light of the intellect. Do we feel better about experience considered and mediated in poetry than we do about the kind of weird psychic drama of Roethke's slippery roots and strange little songs about rats and the underlife?

Certainly the poem that Robert has chosen this week is one that has far more kinship to Roethke, Berryman and Plath than to the work that Bishop, Lowell or Kunitz were doing at about the same time.

This is too fantastic -- A great set of coincidences, then.

Contempo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:51:01 GMT

Mark Doty, thank you for finding & taking the time to post the full text of the Roethke poem. Very helpful as is your commentary. I feel as if I am back in graduate school! (where I studied with Bill Matthews, whom I'm sure you knew.)

"My mother's countenance

could not unfrown itself."

Tragic, memorable and indeed, as we now say, "dysfunctional." Thanks to both for these contributions and I see now that Sherrod Santos has shown up to discuss the Tuesday "Anonymous" poem. Glory days for the Poems Fray, for sure.

Contempo (a poster here since Summer of 2000, off and on)

Re: question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

tmorin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:53:36 GMT

I see Roethke as the patch of flowering nettles at the foot of that totem pole.

Tomas Morin

question for Mark, Robert, and others interested

CutterMcCool — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:24:49 GMT

Seems Roethke isn't nearly as anthologized as Frost, Stevens, WCW, Lowell, Bishop, et al. Where do you think he ranks amongst 20th century poets? That is to say, how high on the totem pole should his head be carved in?

Re: spells and charms To Mark Doty --

Robert Pinsky — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:46:28 GMT

Yes, he has it both ways, sinister and innocent, frightened and loving-- doubleness again.

Mark, I think maybe your poetry-subconscious was melding "My Papa's Waltz" with "The Waking," ("I wak to sleep and take my waking slow . . . I learn by going where I have to go") another indelible Roethke poem, and a villanelle.

Re: spells and charms To Mark Doty --

Mark Doty — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:30:03 GMT

PS and now I notice that I'd mis-remembered "My Papa's Waltz" as a villanelle. In memory I'd make it even more of a swirling dance than it is!

Re: spells and charms To Mark Doty --

Mark Doty — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:28:53 GMT

Robert, that's weirdly coincidental. The world's bound together by luminous threads, sure enough.

Here's the Roethke poem in question:

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

While it's true that contemporary readers can hardly help but read Roethke's lyric through the lens of our moment's familiar narratives of addiction and the dysfunctional, I still think this poem's a long ways from a warm evocation of family fun. Look at the word choice: dizzy, death, unfrown, battered, scraped, hard. There's real tenderness in it, especially in those last two lines, but they don't erase "I hung on like death." And of course that's the great power of the poem, that Roethke has it both ways at once, which really does capture something of what many people feel toward their parents, that mix of devotion and fear. That polarity's the fuel that makes the poem go, and that's certainly true of the exhilaratingly creepy poem you posted, too.

Re: spells and charms To Mark Doty --

Robert Pinsky — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:01:41 GMT

Coincidence indeed: I happen to be in Saginaw, Michigan, and was touring Theodore Roethke's childhood home at about the same time as when Mark Doty was making his post suggesting, I think rightly, that Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" recalls--and conceivably was inspired by--this week's "Double Deed" poem.

Roethke wrote somewhat Gothic poems for children, in the Walter de la Mare tradition; some of his rhymes and his way with short lines resemble this poem, too.

Mark, a teacher here was suggesting that "My Papa's Waltz" is more affectionate and nostalgic, less miserable, than it seems to some readers. The context was, some of his students were convinced that Roethke was writing about child abuse. "My mother's countenance/ Could not unfrown itself" can to one reader suggest family comedy, to another, something deeply wrong.

Roethke aside, I'm engaged by how the elements of dread and fascination, energy and mortality, animate "Double Deed" in a way that uses reason to unravel itself. As with "Rock-a-bye Baby" and "Bobby Shaftoe," the possibility of political allegory enriches, but does not dispel, the quality of spell or charm.

Re: spells and charms To Mark Doty --

Contempo — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:03:26 GMT

Wow, we are honored. Thanks for being here & posting this helpful note about this week's poem.

Contempo