Monthly Archives: November 2018

13 posts

Pain, Sickness, and the Desire To Be “Adamantly Elsewhere”

poetry reading poetry

saint

In honor of the passing of Tony Hoagland in October, I’m sharing “Arrows,” with its allusion to Saint Sebastian and his arrow-ridden body. The arrows in Tony’s case, of course, would be the cancer that eventually took him. But for others, the arrows could metaphorically equate to many things that torment us, body and soul, causing us, too, to look up, as if nothing on this earth “was ever real”…

 

Arrows
by Tony Hoagland


When a beautiful woman wakes up,
she checks to see if her beauty is still there.
When a sick person wakes up,
he checks to see if he continues to be sick.
He takes the first pills in a thirty-pill day,
looks out the window at a sky
where a time-release sun is crawling
through the milky X ray of a cloud.
   * * * * *
I sing the body like a burnt-out fuse box,
the wires crossed, the panel lit
by red malfunction lights, the pistons firing
out of sequence,
the warning sirens blatting in the empty halls,
and the hero is trapped in a traffic jam,
the message doesn’t reach its destination,
the angel falls down into the body of a dog
and is speechless,
tearing at itself with fast white teeth;
and the consciousness twists evasively,
like a sheet of paper,
       traveled by blue tongues of flame.
   * * * * *
In the famous painting, the saint
looks steadfastly heavenward,
             away from the physical indignity below,
the fascinating spectacle
    of his own body
                     bristling with arrows;
he looks up
as if he were already adamantly elsewhere,
    exerting that power of denial
         the soul is famous for,
that ability to say, “None of this is real:
Nothing that happened here on earth
and who I thought I was,
and nothing that I did or that was done to me,
was ever real.”

R.I.P. Tony Hoagland

poetry

Wow. Not sure how I missed it until alerted via email today, but we lost a good man and a good poet (and not a bad essayist, thank you, too) over a week ago. Here is a fine tribute to Tony Hoagland in the New York Times obituary pages.

And, from only a month before his death to pancreatic cancer, there’s this must read from The Sun by Tony.

Our hearts go out for this loss, but as our thanks go out, too, for the gains in our reading lives and in our lives as poets and Americans.

Tony, we will miss you but never forget you.

Wind. Rain. Hardy’s Poetry.

poetry reading poetry

 

Sometimes you read a poem that somehow comes to be read in its own time. Its perfect time, I might say.

Outside it is still dark before dawn. It is unnaturally warm for November, too, an imperfect “Climate change? What climate change?” New England moment.

Wind. Rain. And me, just in from a dog-walk dreary.

The poem I read is by good old Thomas Hardy. I met Mr. Hardy thanks to Holden Caulfield, protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Holden was reading The Return of the Native while cutting classes at Pencey Prep. If there’s one thing I admire, it’s an educated drop-out.

Anyway, Holden of the Hunting Hat loves that Eustacia Vye, main character of said Return of the Native. And as I loved Salinger’s book, I picked up Hardy’s book, and loved that, too, even though it couldn’t be more different. You know. Mexican enchiladas versus Swedish smorgasbord. Different, but compelling in their own ways.

Somehow the fates cued this morning’s inclement weather for my first read of Thomas Hardy’s “During Wind and Rain.” Only there’s more than wind and rain going down here. It’s raining years. And time.

Fate chose not only the right weather (outside my house) but the right age (inside my mortal coil) for reading this poem. It bleeds mortality. At an alarming rate, too.

See if your years don’t look like leaves blowing off of life’s trees as you read, and you’ll understand! As Thomas Hardy would say: “O!”

 

During Wind and Rain
by Thomas Hardy

They sing their dearest songs—
He, she, all of them—yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face…
Ah, no: the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss—
Elders and juniors—aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat….
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all—
Men and maidens—yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee….
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them—aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs….
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.