THE NIAGARA RIVER

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice -- as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced --
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

The juxtaposition of the choppy lines with the river motif is surprising. It seems like a bad fit for me.

As I take it, the river is a metaphor for life in which we go through our daily routines not really noticing that we're getting older and the world is changing around us. We KNOW that death waits, but we manage to forget for extended periods of time (I mean, I assume that's the only reason you'd make it the Niagara River).

The problem is, I think, that the analogy breaks down (or isn't used especially well). That and I think the line-breaks are fairly middling.

On the other hand, I like that it is clear and purposeful. I can only hope that they're dining on crab...

I suppose this reveals my strong fascination with surrealism and absurdity, and particularly with the works of someone like Magritte, but the first sentence evokes a strong image for me, an amusing and surreal one, of a family of four, dressed in their Sunday best, including bowler hat for dad with his handlebar moustache and mom in her prim ankle-length skirt and high-collared, lacy blouse, the kids, the young daughter, the young son, imitative of the parents, and the four on a raft of sorts, floating down the river and chatting while they dine as if all is right with the world, ignoring the fact that they are floating down a river (and is Niagara Falls at the end?).

I also like, especially, the idea that the scenery passing by is not unlike having the scenery on one's walls change in the midst of a repast (something that might be real today for people with money to spend and room on their walls for large computer screens).

It both helps and hurts that I hear the Talking Heads performing in the background ("Take me to the river...").

It helps because it adds to the absurdity/surrealism of the show, but, regrettably, it is a hindrance in that it points out the cliche that is associating life with a river.

Too, I am not so sure that having one's dining room paintings replaced is something done calmly by anyone. It is typically calculated, very well calculated, is it not?

Nonetheless, I find this one rather amusing and, in the end, somewhat tragic as well, assuming that 'we' are upriver of the falls, in particular, although that only makes the tragedy that much more spectacular when it ultimately occurs.

To cut to the chase, this is to me a poem about life and how we treat the gift of it with nonchalance, knowing of our mortality, but almost willfully refusing to remember that mortality on a daily basis, so that we miss out on the roses we might smell if we would only come to shore on occasion.

I think perhaps the final insinuation is that we only remember our mortality, which is to say, realize it, when we finally hear that mighty roar as we approach the falls.

I can relate.

Take care.

By the way, thanks for the offering, IslandTime!

Take care.

S: Magrite? Oh, apple head dude artist. Talking Heads? (Thanks, that will be in my head all day). I am reminded of Thomas Kinkade and Row, Row, Row your boat. (Hard to relate).

F: I know it is shellfish of me. but I hope it’s not crab. I would like to put myself into the poem and I am violently allergic to crustaceans. That would be worse than going over the falls (or hasten it). Your point about the line breaks…that’s a conversation starter: What should (or could) a poet consider when determining line breaks?

Ceci n'est pas une reponse :)

Good thought re the breaks...excluding the formal such as haiku and sonnet and rhyme schemes (which brings us to free verse?) I would suggest that the line break should be a form of punctuation, a rest, a hard comma, if you will, although I can envision 1,000 mile-long sentences if that is practiced religiously.

Take care.

My crab comment was meant as a final stab at the weekly poem. Thanks to Chuck Klosterman, I have a thought about the Slae poems and most of the poeple here. He says that what writers like about writing is not what consumers like about reading. The poems we get are very writer-centered, which isn't such a bad thing in poetry world because all the readers are writers. Consequently, most of the commentary is from a writer's perspective, not a readers.

As far as line breaks, my text book answer is that a line break creates a point of pause and emphasis. The first method is to follow the structure and break lines at their natural emphasis and transitions. The other method is to use the line-break to create an unnatural (but useful) emphasis or ambiguity. There is also the use of line length to create a fragmented or fluid feel, but that's a little different.

My feeling is that if unnatural line don't add they detract. I thought the poem's were hit or miss in that regard...

Hi SF,

well, we respectfully disagree on a couple of counts, one in this post, one in your linebreak post (note how I co-opted you into this "respectful disagreement" business :-) presumptuous lass am i ...

First in this post, you say:

...this is to me a poem about life and how we treat the gift of it with nonchalance, knowing of our mortality, but almost willfully refusing to remember that mortality on a daily basis, so that we miss out on the roses we might smell if we would only come to shore on occasion.

I think the poem is saying quite the opposite, at least as it boils down (crabs, beware!) to the specific you get to ... I think that Ryan is instead suggesting, not to "come to the shore on occasion [to smell the roses]" but to the contrary, when you're on a river, KNOW you're on a river, live as if you're on a river, feel the river, see what you are passing by [not what is passing you by - we are not pre-Galileo! how passive our metaphors so readily position us as being!] ... Don't go try to smell roses or imagining being onshore (living in the past or future) when it's a lovely river you're riding (in the present).

AND, what I thought this poem was contextually derived from but which (i confess surprise, but, hey, joy that we each see things uniquely) I don't see anyone yet expressing here is the degree to which "civilization" is ruining us, ruining our ride along the river, cuz instead of seeing the trees and the mountains and the whatever for what they are, we instead relate to them mediated by our "bourgeois" existences that see things in terms of paintings -- Ceci n'est pas une pipe indeed! ... and as if 'movers' we (the narrator's little entourage) hire to do our scut work (the nitty gritty of living in the present) for us are just imagined to be replacing the scenery for us to keep us 'entertained' with novelty ... Somehow we know it is a river (life, not a dress rehearsal or an art gallery) but we keep forgetting - or have forgotten period - what one does on a river to do "being on a river" instead of imagining being somewhere else or that it is for "noticing" and cogitating" and "positioning" our tables and ourselves as if in front of it. These aren't front-row seats we're supposed to be sitting in, we're in "the drink" (so to speak) and yet scratching our heads.

Given my own take, then, I didn't get the scene out of Seurat (or whoever) that I translated your description into ... I get a very "modern" and way too "sophisticated" to the point of near zombie like distanced, abstracted take on living.

As to my second "beef," SF - re line breaks. Gosh, I quite disagree that they should fall, a la tradition, at pauses. Sometimes, yes, but the unexpected 'change-ups' (instead of constant line drives) which postmodern (?) linebreaking achieves -- when done well -- is quite refreshing. And when done well, it makes punctuation additive to the mix instead of merely redundant. I mean, for the most part (except sometimes in, say, W. S. Merwin) one reads knowing exactly where the pause is "supposed" to be, where it would come in a grammar text complete with comma, etc., but to further play with phrasings such that double entendres can result, for example, with the mere deft use of a mid-phrase line break... well, I'm quite the convert to it myself.

[back in my heyday of poetry analysis - what a hallucination - i.e., as a college English major - I don't recall reading any poetry that ever put line breaks anywhere else BUT where a pause/punctuation would go, although it's possible i was either too spaced out then or now to notice/recall. When I resumed poetry perusion it was here on PF in 2002 and I do recall at first being a bit startled by what had transpired in 30+ years to linebreaking, but on nearly a dime, I found myself quite taking to it. Again, when well done ... all too many 'poets' seem to do weird line breaks for the sake of weird line breaks, and that to me makes it banal rather than refreshing. I like refreshing. :-)]

To wit, check out the full version (or even the excerpted end) of the Randall Jarrell poem that PB brings to bear in his thread here in a reply to me ... The break in "Swann's Way" comes to mind immediately as a recent reading of a line break I found to work with nice reverberation ... I can't say that any of Ryan's in this poem did any of that reverberating-via-line-break for me, although some are fair-to-middlin' -- putting "dining room paintings" on its own line is kind of interesting because, to my mind, the break allows it to refer to "we" the noticing passengers -- as if they themselves were as 2-dimensional as paintings (I picture "motel art" by the art for the type of paintings she is alluding to here) - before getting to "replaced" which disambiguates via passive that it isn't the "we" but the riverside scenery that is analogized to the dining room paintings... That's the kind of notion that to me makes line breaking add its own level of interest to a poem.

p.s. And, fwiw, perhaps already obvious but: It's easy to get sucked into picturing these "positioners" in the poem as being on a boat where they're doing this dining, by virtue of naming tables and chairs.

But the key determining analogy, i think, is in "as though / the river were / a floor..."

They're IN the river acting as if they were dining on a floor. Bad grasping of the flow of life. (or something) A dose of reality therapy in order.

:-)

S: I re-read my post and I should have been clearer. The “Tom and Row, Row” comment was directed at the poem, not your post; I wanted to make sure you knew that. Kay Ryan’s poetry (those few poems I have read) just does not seem to get my engines running (not that I am firing on all cylinders).

“I would suggest that the line break should be a form of punctuation, a rest, a hard comma, if you will” That makes sense. Given that, when I read this poem it does sound choppy. Yet it doesn’t read choppy if I figuratively turn my head sideways and follow the punctuation. Is it possible the author is trying to get us to go downstream?

I have known islandtime for several years, and I know she is one smart cookie, but she is also a sly dog. So I think she chose this poem, not only because of Ryan’s recent recognition, but because she wants us to revisit the existentialism we’ve been batting around for a few weeks.

Meghan O’Rourke, in a recent Slate article on Kay Ryan, noted that Ryan calls herself a "rehabilitator of clichés." For me, “The Niagara River” perfectly fits that comment. The cliché concerns the river of life. But in this poem, Ryan appears, instead, to be emphasizing its impending doom – whether in the form of death or disaster of some kind.

OK, here’s the existentialist part (or the Surrealistic/Absurdist part). Folks know life leads to death, know that life is just another word for chaos. But we existentially go on, positioning our table and chairs on this river of doom and disaster as if it were a floor. That’s what existentialists, do, for crying out loud!

Trouble is, after awhile, we forget all about the “floor” of doom and begin focusing on nature’s pretty pictures passing by on the shore.

We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

Yes, indeed. We DO know that the floor is really the Niagara River, and we DO know that our table and chairs are sitting precariously on that river. But after a while, we tend to forget the existential reason we put the table and chairs on the river in the first place. All we know is that the chairs are comfortable and the table is stable. And wasn’t existentialism something we worried about ‘way back in the last millennium when we were in college? Didn’t the Republicans or the Social Security system or flood insurance or Botox do away with the necessity for existentialism? Say, look at that man waving to us from the shore? He looks worried; I wonder why…..

My favorite line break is the one above between “do” and “know.” Yes, we “know, we do.” But notice how Ryan slyly saves the word “know” the next line. We may say yes, we know, we really do know that life is one big banana peel. But according to Ryan, saying it and remembering (really “knowing”) what that truly means are two entirely different things.

This poem creates a structure for itself. The line breaks here create an underlying sense of discomfort, as if this would be, should be a comfortable afternoon boat ride, but there are choppy little waves not to be ignored. They call attention to the vowel patterns and consonant patterns which carry the sense of the poem. For example, the recurring Rs create a rumbling undercurrent. They disappear for a comforting moment starting at As it moves along, then make their way back. The three hard little words in the last line are a snap of clarity-the rumble is gone. It’s a good poem to read out loud. The sound carries the menacing, the meaning. Changing scenes along the shore. The repetition We do know, we do know is strong, and reminds me personally of Issa:
The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet—
but some days everything does.

THE NIAGARA RIVER

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice -- as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced --
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

okay, this hermiting thing is very hard to pull off (eek - i see an all-nighter coming!)

I agree with some of what you say here, MA (most definitely including that IT is not only smart but sly ... the dog part, well, not so sure ... more like a grazing deer, i suspect :-) ...

anyway, and some of which i disagree with so of course I now cannot peacefully return to my reading/writing without having to take on at least ONE of those little things:

Folks know life leads to death, know that life is just another word for chaos. But we existentially go on, positioning our table and chairs on this river of doom and disaster as if it were a floor. That’s what existentialists, do, for crying out loud!

No, MA, existentialism being one of the things i am re-reading and ever more indepthedly for the umpteenth time this summer (guess who's still/back in college :-) ... That's not what existentialists do ...

See, to wit, the Sartre quote I played back to PB this morning in his thread. Or here's another one:

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were telling a story. Jean-Paul Sartre

Or read -- if you haven't, then by ALL means do, really -- Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning ...

Existentialists believe that awareness of death, if nothing else does it, ought to be THE thing to wake one up to the responsibility of making living and all our life choices count, each and every one of them, no excuses ... No "the past made me do it" or whatever ...

If anything, Ryan's poem, imho, advocates an existentialist position, it doesn't mock it or go against it.

Okay, please don't write anything brilliant - I gotta stay outta here. (But please write something :-) ..

:-)

z

Nice, falcon. I like that.

(and i'm rethinking my claim that Ryan's line breaks were only so-so, realizing that more and more of them are quite apt and ept - MA also made me think more on the "do know, / we do" line - kind of echoes the insistent "we do, we do, we really do, really really we do" (too insistent - we really don't, or don't act as if we do)

I often find it difficult to determine when Ryan's line breaks are smart or simply clever: whether they add to the meaning/structure/syntax or just disguise her, at times, over reliance on greeting card quality rhyme and meter. In this case I think the breaks work. As I think someone else pointed out, the breaks reflect the turbulent movement of the river--home of the infamous "whirlpool rapids" (complete with cable car ride!)

Interestingly I was just out at the beach and saw a tug towing a full size house out on the ocean moving from somewhere out Montauk/New England way towards New York and had this crazy thought about what it would be like if there were people inside calmly going about the business of living.

The interesting contrast here is between what we "know" and the actions we take in spite of or perhaps in defiance of that knowledge. The "though" of the fiirst line makes it clear that we know this is a river. The use of "calmy" is an interesting choice: if I were eating dinner somewhere and the pictures on the walls kept changing I would outwardly remain calm, but be very perplexed (am I crazy? is this a Candid Camera episode, should I say something?) This moves the poem nicely towards that double statement of what we know and the understanding that we we know is not the same as understanding what it means.

THE NIAGARA RIVER

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice -- as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced --
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.