When I see a phrase I don't like in a poem, the word that comes to mind is heavy. The phrase seems to weigh the poem down, so that there is a sag at the place where it occurs. This metaphor expresses the need for all materials to be digested. I think every short poem needs a certain amount of material that is successfully digested but with difficulty. Otherwise what we have is something like greeting card verse.

A poem also must have nearly an appearance of effortlessness even if it is in fact the product of considerable effort. It should not appear to drive a conclusion home. Rather, it should come to a conclusion but not with any sense of pressure, rather as if a natural process is going on. For an example, see "Young Sycamore" by Williams:

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Some analyses of this can be found here:

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There has been a lot of talk about poems being written in fifteen minutes or even "found." Frank O'Hara is supposed to have thought of the poem as "the chronicle of the creative act that produces it." As far as I'm concerned it should try to look effortless even if it's not, but that's as far as I go -- the true fifteeen mnute poems I've seen are mostly a pretty bad lot.

"Dissolving" elaborates these concepts of light and heavy, effortless and purposeful. It is about poetic creation. The materials of the poet's work exist, but at first they do not combine properly. Something is needed to fuse them and does not occur merely with effort, but by a chance event.

The poet is floating on his back in the water. He can breathe with no need to raise his head, and he looks at the sky, which is bright and clear, so that there is no anticipation of rain. Such clouds as exist are thin, meaning no possibility of a diversion of mind by considering their shapes. Even the water is substanceless. He feels afloat in nothing. In short, he is even more at ease than he would be anywhere on land.

All the same the creative process is going on, resulting from the "union of atoms", which seems purposeful but is not. The fusing grace is initiated by a random event, meaning that we do not know how it originates, but it is a union of atoms. This is a fine scientific metaphor. The molecules of the air are constantly in random motion. The poetic mind is therefore something tiny, but it does digest meanings. The sobbing face on the stairs and the debate about the gods are the materials of the process but they are not part of "Dissolving" because this is about the process of making and not the poem being made. Then there is "the screech of delight at finished work" marking the even of completion and the poem drifting off as a separate thing and no longer a work-in-progress in the mind.

But this is still not really a chronicle of the creative act because the most important part seems to come from nowhere and at random.

A PAP, Bottomfish??!! Ye gods, did I miss that?? I thought my PAP-detector was pretty good, but perhaps not.

I can see your point about poetry-making being a combination of heavy cud-chewing and light, drifting receptiveness. But I wonder about the word "seeming" in the phrase

one with the water and air and light
and the purposeful seeming union of atoms
producing a mind digesting meanings

It's as if the poet is suggesting that things are not as purposeful as they appear to be. That isn't quite the same as your saying that poetry should appear to be effortless.

Bottomfish and MA,

Sorry to havve been out of the loop, but I thought I'd check in. . .I like your take on O'Hara, BF, and I think that this poem and O'Hara are linking in another way: do you see the not so subtle homoeroticism of the poem? The union of atoms? (Adams?) If you read it in the light of the poem being a metaphor for the 'love that dare not speak its name,' perhaps antoher side of the poem will be revealed. . .

This doesn't make it a good poem, but I do think that the clevelrness of the metaphors and the proprietous way in which he is considering his erotic nature, is clever and worth considering . . .

do you see the not so subtle homoeroticism of the poem?

I dunno, HAP. Barry Goldensohn is a poet and retired prof who has been married for a long time to poet Lorrie Goldensohn.

This poem seems more to be one of Goldensohn's many poems about a man contemplating his past life now that he is older.

MA,

That line

and the purposeful seeming union of atoms

seems to me to need a hyphen, making purposeful-seeming. The union of atoms that produces the mind digesting meanings seems purposeful but is not. That's consistent with everything else being so indolent. I agree that things are not purposeful.

Anyway, if it's not about making a poem it must be about creative thinking of some kind.

Hi, BF, In the time it took me to go back and read the poem and determine that I was reading the line MaryAnn mentioned as "purposeful-seeming union" as opposed to "purposeful, seeming union," you beat me to the punch. But I agree with you completely.

As to your comment, "if it's not about making a poem it must be about creative thinking of some kind," I was struck by how much of what Goldensohn describes sounds like meditation. The idea of settling one's self in a certain position, letting thoughts float by (much as scenes float by out a train window), trying to become one with the universe, all seem to fall into a meditative category. There is even one point where the body becomes immaterial, with little discrimination between the elements above and below it.

There's something about the influence of water -- whether floating in a lake, being in the shower, listening to windshield wipers in the rain -- that stimulates a meditative state. And while the first two scenes that come back to the narrator involve high drama of some sort (sobbing, debate), I believe the delight of the third scene might be the sort of eureka moment that comes during the best of meditations.

Forgetting the dangerous weight of his body
on the calm skin of the lake, he swims
on his back in the female receptive position,
face to the bright sky, thin clouds
vaporizing fast in the sun's brilliance
with the water beneath him penetrated by light
and substanceless as air and he afloat
in nothing, one with the water and air and light
and the purposeful seeming union of atoms
producing a mind digesting meanings
like a ruminant disgorging from stomach to stomach
the sobbing face on the stairs, the debate
about all the gods, the screech of delight
at finished work, weightless stuff ready
to drift away in the water and air and light.

I was struck by how much of what Goldensohn describes sounds like meditation.

Wow, reading everyone's takes here and in other threads, I've noticed several more different takes than on most other Tuesday poems.

Perhaps what allows us so many entry ways into this poem is it's ability to hold and to let go of its own meanings. Look how often it offers and takes away at the same time: the dangerous weight is forgotten, the he is a receptive female; the purposefullness union of atoms is only "seeming;" a mind digesting and disgorging meanings; and then the distinct, vibrant, emotionally charged, almost violent trio of images, all weightless.

This is a poem that defies specificity: not a PAP, not a homoerotic meditation. At its simplest it's about a nice float on a sunny day, an experience many can relate to, but there is a thread here about experience and the process of understanding experience. I think the question that needs to be answered here is where is the narrator in this poem?

Forgetting the dangerous weight of his body
on the calm skin of the lake, he swims
on his back in the female receptive position,
face to the bright sky, thin clouds
vaporizing fast in the sun's brilliance
with the water beneath him penetrated by light
and substanceless as air and he afloat
in nothing, one with the water and air and light
and the purposeful seeming union of atoms
producing a mind digesting meanings
like a ruminant disgorging from stomach to stomach
the sobbing face on the stairs, the debate
about all the gods, the screech of delight
at finished work, weightless stuff ready
to drift away in the water and air and light.

Hi, MA, Although Goldensohn's description of what the narrator was doing in the poem sounded a lot like meditation, I'm not saying it was a poem about meditation. Does that make any sense, or does it sound too much like back-pedaling?

I think the question that needs to be answered here is where is the narrator in this poem?

Hi, OneArt, Is that a rhetorical question, or were you going to answer it? (I was hoping you were going to answer it.) In re-reading the poem in light of your question, I notice that the poem is written in 3rd person, so perhaps part of the answer to your question is "far away."

I never have the time these responses really need....my intention was to answer, but the road to the National Poerty Awards is paved with good intentions (or something like that). Anyway, yes it's third person, but the narrator doesn't feel "far away" to me at all. In fact the temptation here is to say that the narrator and the "he" of the poem are one and the same (i.e. the poet). If that's the case, how would this read if it were in first person and how does the choice of third person help or hinder? I think the 3rd person choice is the only view point that works here, given that the theme here is detachment or "dissolving."

Bill, what you wrote is an insightful comment on why the poet chose third person instead of first person for this poem. Thanks for expanding my horizons.

hi OA,

Just to say that I read the 3rd person choice as you did and to just add that the 3rd personizing of what I too think is himself seems appropriate to what we think of as 'out of body' experiences - observing ourselves as if 'dissolved' into space and looking down on our corporal state of being with, as you say, detachment ... fitting the titular theme...

z

(but i still had a problem with it :-)

From Adam's Curse, currently on my Yeats top ten:

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."

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But this is still not really a chronicle of the creative act because the most important part seems to come from nowhere and at random.

Some folks (like me, and maybe you) would say the seeming from nowhere and at random quality is the definition of a creative act, and all we can chronicle.

I kept meaning to say in my posts, that I don't actually like this poem very much, maybe because it does its job too well: poet, poem, narrator and meaning seem to just float away. As I said, I think this is a piece about process and not about meaning, or rather how the process IS the meaning, which is an interesting thought, but doesn't seem to make for very good poetry, at least not in this case.