The Rose Family by Robert Frost
The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose -
But were always a rose.
In a world of continually changing ideas and attitudes and definitions, the poet Robert Frost playfully suggests here in "The Rose Family" that some things do not change. The original nature of the one whom he addresses in the poem, the "you" referenced in line 9, is and always has been, metaphorically, a rose.
Like Sylvia, the shy girl character in "A White Heron," who finds companionship and solace and joy in the woods among small animals and birds and who in the end will not betray them for anything or anyone, there is here recognition of essential goodness, beauty, and truth of sorts.
Like Sylvia, the shy girl character in "A White Heron," who finds companionship and solace and joy in the woods among small animals and birds and who in the end will not betray them for anything or anyone, there is here recognition of essential goodness, beauty, and truth of sorts.
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Today essay 3, posted last week, is due in class. We have gotten behind in our readings and discussions and so some of the material I will cover here may not get much air time in class. Be reminded that the recitation due week 11 requires you memorize and recite a 14-line poem or passage from a longer poem. AT getlit.org and poetryoutloud.org you can review some of the stellar performances of students doing just such performance work. I hope the assignment is fun and enriching for you. Choose a poem you feel you have a strong connection with or that draws you in powerful ways.
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We will begin this week (week 6), reading some of Charles Bukowski’s autobiographical fiction, including the little piece “Son of Satan,” which recounts how a group of boys alleviate the boredom of a day in the suburbs by torturing an erstwhile playmate, Simpson, a kid rather quiet, different, the narrator says, perhaps simply weaker than they in some way, but “a loner. Probably lonely.” Not so different in fact, we can imagine. But the narrator takes Simpson's offhand boast of having "fucked a girl" under the narrator’s own house as a challenge; a territorial overstep, to be ruthlessly punished. They all know or suspect Simpson's just making it up, copying their own penchant for boasts and lies that make themselves all feel more powerful than they are in fact. Simpson's story is just a fantasy, “a lie” he’d come up with in hearing them talk of such things. Still, after a brief mock “trial” they hang him from his porch.
Before Simpson can come to serious bodily harm, the narrator cuts him down, and then the narrator, Bukowski's fictional alter-ego, goes for a long walk, feeling lost, “vacant” and somewhat remorseful. His shoes are thin and “hurt [his] feet.” When he says that the “nails started coming through the soles,” I thought of the story of Christ, whose feet were nailed to a cross. When he gets home his father is waiting for him, and he wants answers. But the boy, perhaps unable to explain, and afraid, chooses instead to fight his angry father, who for all he knows, might kill him. In the end, the boy is hiding under the bed, hoping to elude the big man’s grasp, waiting.
The power and influence of parents and other authorities–especially when we feel ourselves at odds with it all–is something we contend with as we come into our own and throughout our lives. For we are always growing and changing; the Self is not static. So, our confidence may be shaken, and our own legitimacy in doubt at times. The story, to me, illustrates something of the cruelty, suffering, and longing for relief that mark a human life. The narrator is coming to terms with these experiences in the only way he knows. He suffers, and he makes others suffer, too. He feels guilty, but rebellious still. He is confused, and doesn't understand why things are the way they are. The fight between him and his father, their coming to blows, appears a crucial departure in his young life. He rejects his father, who calls him a "son of Satan" and seeks to punish the boy for all the trouble he has caused. In the end, the narrator simply waits for "the next thing," hearing the sound of his own heart and blood coursing through his body.
Where does final authority reside? That is a question raised in Bukowski's work, and in St. Augustine's Confessions, and in many of the other works. The individual human journey typically involves authority issues, as it the individual who must finally assume "authorship" of his or her life/story, and live it for all its worth. In these stories, the narrator seeks to find his way through the world of conflict in which he finds himself enmeshed, to a place of meaning and relative rest and peace. Augustine finds his answer in Christianity and service to the church, embracing the idea of God the Father, coming home, as it were, to Him, and there finding an ultimate affirmation of existence.
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In the autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), she records her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries. We'll review some of her writing here, and in addition, The Navaho Night Chant, which offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.
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"Tintern Abbey" is a late 18th century romantic poem about the beneficent influences of nature on the author, William Wordsworth. It is written in blank verse and set within sight of an ancient abbey and the banks of the Wye river. Tintern Abbey was a popular destination during the 18th and 19th centuries. Remote and overgrown in a wild way after centuries of disuse, it appealed to adventuresome romantics, Wordsworth and his sister among them. The poem is one of the great ones of English Romanticism and shows Wordworth's philosophical, some say pantheistic belief in the unity or oneness of God and the natural world.
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Into the Wild (2007) is a film written and directed by Sean Penn. It is based on a non-fiction book of the same title written by Jon Krakauer and published in 1996. The story of Christopher McCandless is the story of a young man’s quest for a more authentic Self and relationship with the world. McCandless graduates college and then–disappears, leaving his family to wonder what has become of him. The story is told in titled chapters, and records his odyssey across the American West. In the end, he struck many as noble and inspirational, and others as foolish and arrogant. The author Jon Krakauer and the filmmaker Sean Penn sought to show the heroic qualities of McCandless , particularly his curiosity, courage, determination, and willingness to sacrifice for what he believed. They reveal, too, his personal conflicts and issues, his weaknesses, soft spots and blind spots, his carelessness. The film, I think, is a moving portrait of his quest for freedom and authenticity. I only wish it were a little shorter.
Howl is a film based on a now very famous poem–"Howl"–by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997). At the time of its writing, Ginsberg was a young man coming to terms with his own identity as a homosexual and felt himself at odds with much of American culture, in particular its militarism and capitalistic excesses and its opposition to homosexuality. The poem is personal, autobiographical, raw, and graphic in its depictions of a generation ("the best minds of my generation") living on edge, and finding meaning (or whatever "sensations") in those edges. The poem became famous at least in part because government authorities considered it obscene, and a trial ensued to have its publication banned. Ginsberg wrote the poem in free verse in a style imitative of Walt Whitman's work, in long lines uttered with force, in sometimes broken syntax and with odd juxtapositions of words that reflect the urgency, intensity and spontaneity of Ginsberg's poetic vision. The authorities objected to the poem's profane language and sexual content, contending it had no literary merit, considering it indecent in so many ways.
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In the Symposium of Plato, an inquiry into the nature of love is made by Socrates and his guests. One story comes from Aristophanes: “Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you.”
He goes on to speak of an ancient myth recounted by Homer that humans were originally of three kinds or sexes, each with two heads, four hands, four arms and legs, and so on. There was man, woman, and a combination of the two, the androgyne. These were mighty creatures and they made an attack upon the gods, who repelled them and then sought to curtail their power. Zeus decided to split them in two. Thus we have since spent our lives yearning for our other half, whether male or female:
And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment. –from Aristophanes's Speech from Plato's Symposium
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Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Desire by Stephen Dobyns
A woman in my class wrote that she is sick
of men wanting her body and when she reads
her poem out loud the other women all nod
and even some of the men lower their eyes
and look abashed as if ready to unscrew
their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads
with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none
would think of confessing his hunger
or admit how desire can ring like a constant
low note in the brain or grant how the sight
of a beautiful woman can make him groan
on those first spring days when the parkas
have been packed away and the bodies are staring
at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;
and there was a man I knew who even at ninety
swore that his desire had never diminished.
Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
and the world flares up in an explosion of light?
Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
of their desire, as if each were a criminal
out on parole, a desperado with a long record
of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes
each one from all but the worst company,
and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?
But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,
the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve
of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
and fat possibility swaggers into the world
like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes
the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
for closure, for the completion of the circle,
as if each of us were born only half a body
and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X
across its bald head, to hold out a hand
for each passing woman to slap? Better
to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous
or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination
and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
relief from the self, the prisoner let out
into a small square of sunlight with a single
red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back
against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming
in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?
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Literature is filled with stories and poems about our quest for love in one or another of its forms. We will spend some time looking at them in the coming weeks.
