THE FEATHER OF TRUTH AND THE WHORE OF BABYLON

The Feather Against Which My Heart Will Be Weighed

The crow feather I found was not an idea.

The crow feather was a black slash on the green lawn.

It was a way of counting. One. One. 

The crow feather seemed to be waiting for me.

It rested, abided, as though placed just so

for the one time I would walk to its threshold. 

I believe the crow feather when it is in my hand.

I know that it is a feather in my hand,

black quill, inkless, for writing out the gospel.

~ Michael Chitwood, from Poor Mouth Jubilee

**

JUDGMENT DAY

I saved a drowning dragonfly,
with a canopy pole I hoisted him up

from the pool. Without pausing to dry
the stained glass of bronze-veined wings,

he took to the air, a weightless shimmer
zigzagging across the dazzled backyard.

Perhaps this buoyant brilliance
will save me on Judgment Day –

on one scale, my heart
filled with darkness;

on the other, like the Egyptian
Feather of Truth,

a translucent dragonfly wing.
   
~ Oriana Ivy © 2013

In both poems, I’m astonished by the human ability to see far-reaching pattern and meaning in almost anything. Of course we have thousands of years of culture to draw on, including various mythologies. There are patterns and symbols that those mythologies have in common. Black birds like crows are typically messengers of death. The souls are weighed against something that is practically weightless: a feather or one tear from the eye of the goddess of mercy (if we are dealing with a benevolent mythology).

After a friend read my “Judgment Day,” she asked with dismay, “But what if there is no Judgment Day?” “It doesn’t matter,” I replied. Of course there won’t be any literal Judgment Day or the Second Coming any more than my heart will ever be weighed against any feather or an insect wing. “Judgment Day” is every day, if we stop to think about our actions and whether or not we are helping or hurting living things. Then why this persistent use of worn-out mythologies in literature and in the arts in general? 

The earliest manuscript of the Gospel of Mark (“Mark” was a name made-up later; the early texts of the gospels were anonymous)

Generation after generation of writers, why this constant revisionist return to the old mythologies? My answer is that we can’t help it: we are wired to seek meaning and modulate that meaning to serve us now. Finding a meaning is uplifting. It brings us comfort to think (without literally believing) that a crow feather we found is a quill for writing the gospel, or that a weightless dragonfly wing can tip the scales in favor of paradise. Now, you may object, Michael Chitwood’s crow feather is “inkless,” so perhaps the only gospel he could write would be blank -- a fit image of modernity, it could be argued. But this is outweighed by the very fact that the speaker sees a purpose in finding the crow feather, and feels himself chosen for a special task precisely because he found that feather. It was “waiting” for him.

Does he literally believe that the feather was waiting for him? Do I literally believe that the wing of a dragonfly I rescued will open for the me the gates of paradise? Of course not. If we did, we’d probably be on a mental ward, zombified with drugs that are supposed to suppress delusions. Only a schizophrenic would believe that everything is a secret message, an omen, a crow feather a sign that one is chosen to write a new gospel.

But a writer can get away with saying the wildest things because some more general meaning is intended, along with the universal human yearning to be needed, to have a purpose.

And there is beauty in the fact that feathers were once used as quills for writing.

We know that myths often stem from cognitive illusions, e.g. the illusion that everything must have a purpose, or that good actions will be rewarded . . . . And yet, and yet . . .  There is a beauty to mythic stories, and it’s a joy to play with possible symbolism. As long as we are not willing to kill or die for the “truth”and as long as we are thinking symbolically for private joy but don’t try for force others to see what we see (though of course, like Whitman, we invite the reader to believe what we believe), there is no harm. If the poem of this sort is well-written, it gives intellectual and esthetic pleasure of the sort that makes life worth living.

And ultimately, perhaps, it’s the memory value of stories and images. Myths give us both. Daphne changing into laurel is so transformed by beauty that we don’t think of in terms of “sexual harassment” -- though this rescue from unwanted closeness also teaches a subtle lesson that any choice comes with a price. Aphrodite arising from sea-foam is likewise a transfiguration by beauty of the gruesome violence that precedes it. Thanks to this beauty we can rest a bit from the incessant crucifixions and last judgments of religious art, the naked bodies of the damned falling headlong into the flames.

Mythologies can also be non-supportive and anti-life -- at least in some interpretations. Here are five indelible lines from “Blue Stones” by Larry Levis:

My father thought dying
Was like standing trial for crimes
You could not remember.
Then somebody really does throw
The first stone.

This is the result of toxic theology that derives its power from threats of punishment. The message of compassion is lost, and punishment is coming -- even though we can’t even remember our sins. Imagine a mother of six on trial for losing her temper. This is the absurdity we get with anti-human, anti-life religion. 

For historical reasons, on the Hebraic side, ours is a mythology of exile and punishment -- the alternative was to admit that Yahweh was powerless to protect his people, or simply did not care. Better to see each disaster as divine punishment rather than accept impotence or indifference. Better a cruel god than empty air.

Fortunately that’s not the only mythology out there. I like what Joseph Campbell says: “A myth is the dynamic of life. You may or may not know it, and the myth you may be respectfully worshiping on Sunday may not be the one that’s really working in your heart.” Campbell goes on to say that we need to “filter out of the inheritance of traditions those aspects that support you in your own inward life.” 

Some say no, we have to accept the whole package, the cruel and the nasty together with the compassionate and supportive. Those people tend to believe that the whole package  somehow dropped from heaven rather than got created by culturally evolving humans over many centuries. Once we know the human origin of this amazing compilation, once we already ARE being selective -- the bible tends to be quoted VERY selectively -- I say let’s be even more selective. Let’s take only the best and most supportive from each tradition -- that which helps us live. Life should be a joy: not a ledger of sins and failures to live up to impossible standards, but an iridescent beauty like a dragonfly.

*

By the way, biblical scholars -- who study the manuscripts of the gospels in the original Greek -- have discovered that the story of the woman taken in adultery, the origin of the expression “to cast the first stone” -- does not exists in the earliest versions. It was added in the margin by a scribe copying a manuscript, and incorporated into the body of text by a later scribe.

 This indicates that there were stories floating around in the oral tradition, and this one in particular found itself added to the text held to be inerrant and unchangeable. Some would call it a forgery. One of the most revered gospel stories, foundational, of utmost importance to the ethical teachings of Christianity -- a forgery?

Everyone loves this story. Removing it would cause an uproar. Considering the lesson it teaches, does it matter if it’s invented -- a myth, a legend that just happens to fit the teachings better than anything else?

*

DARK AND DARKER

There are many dark passages in Larry Levis. This one speaks to me in a very personal way:

Each day at noon
I used to close my eyes,
And lie alone in the dark, listening.
And you never spoke,
Never uttered the thin prayer that was me.

In the poem Levis is addressing his own “spirit.” There is a poetic tradition of addressing one’s own soul. Now that many don’t believe in having a soul (unless as a synonym for the ever-shifting mental life), such addressing of the soul is almost bound to come up empty. The soul will not speak to us. It doesn’t care about us at all. No surprise.

But I react to this passage for a different reason. Once a year or so, I decide to “give god yet another chance.” I lie down and send a humble supplication into the air: please give me a sign that you exist. I don’t expect a voice from the whirlwind. I don’t expect the clouds to open to reveal the “eye in the sky.” Any subtle sign will do. The shadow of a twig moving across a corner of the wall. Some faint music. A rustle or a barely audible whisper.

I turn into total attention. And the result is, at best, only the steady hum of the refrigerator. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I realize that a theist would object to this exercise. Never mind my attentiveness: the divine reveals itself only at its own choosing. So far it has not chosen to. I may not be a worthy vessel: an intellectual and not a simple housewife, the kind who tends to get abducted by aliens.

There is a sadness about this silence of the missing god, but also a challenge to name something else that helps me live. What’s interesting is that this “something” also responds only when it’s ready. I mean that which is sometimes called the “cognitive and creative unconscious.” I have a private name for it, but it shall not be revealed. In public, I also call it “the other self.” This too is a bit awkward, since it’s a process, not a static entity: the mysterious processing of information that the brain does “on the back burner.” I pose a question; the answer will come when it’s ready. 

You could say I trust my brain. I trust that in time it will find that one-in-a-million missing pieces of information -- as long as at some forgotten time I put it there. I trust my brain not because it’s infallible, but because on the whole it’s reliable and performs amazing (to me at least) feats.

I’ve come to trust my brain, meaning I trust myself. I am not a fallen creature bent on evil except if I go to confession and cleanse my dirty soul (car wash images intrude here). I trust myself to be kind to others, relying on the empathy I was born with and developed later without any conscious effort. I trust that my intricate brain can grasp complex ideas and enjoy metaphors. I trust myself, and not the “prophet” who stands in the busiest corner of downtown with a sign that the world will end before the year is over. I very much enjoy the description of the Whore of Babylon and the Catholic Encyclopedia’s attempt to refute the argument that the Vatican is the Whore of Babylon. I enjoy it all, but for the perception of reality, I trust myself. What a concept. 

(A shameless digression: Even when I believed in god, I didn’t trust him. He was not to be trusted. “Where were you when I needed you?” is for me a religious anthem. God does not protect children from abuse and misfortune, as Ivan Karamazov brilliantly points out before stating, If my entry to paradise is bought with one tear of a tortured child, I return the ticket.

One of the first things a child learns about god from experience rather than from catechism is that god doesn’t answer prayers in any reliable fashion, and he permits dreadful things to go on. So what use is he? He keeps you scared. He is the ultimate judge and executioner. It was said that if not for the fear of god, people would lead a life of sin, and even crime. What I saw was that criminals went to prison, so apparently that fear of divine justice didn’t work too well: we needed human justice after all. Later I learned that people were good or bad apparently in proportion to the amount of empathy they felt for others; social and economic factors also played a role. Empathy, universal in all social species of mammals, is another reason I am so impressed by the brain.)

(Another shameless digression. A reader asked me, in what I imagined a shocked tone of voice: “But Oriana, what if after you die you wake up and discover you are fully conscious and accountable for your life?” I replied that I hold myself accountable for my life right here, on earth. But if I found myself fully conscious after dying, what a wonderful surprise! And knowing that I haven’t done anything that would merit eternal damnation, what is there to fear? But if god tosses into eternal fire all those who because of an accident of birth did not hold the correct belief -- millions of Hindus, for example -- then he is worse by far than Hitler.)

But I know I will not “wake up” after death. Only a living brain produces consciousness. I’m amazed by both the conscious and the unconscious processes. I love the way the brain can make some use of whatever comes its way: accidental discovery of some old notes, for instance, or passages in books opened at random. Sometimes this could be called inspiration, and it can be fairly complex. Sometimes it’s simply recall of something long-forgotten: what is the name of that California tree that’s like a poplar, but with a thicker trunk, and grows near streams, in the ravines? Paper tree, my consciousness instantly suggests, but I know that’s wrong. I think my answer may be in a poem by Larry Levis. I get out of bed (it’s past my bedtime), find the book, and start reading Larry Levis. The word is stubbornly missing. I drop the book and turn off the light. And instantly I know: cottonwood. I get out of bed to scribble “cottonwood” on a slip of paper, but know it’s not really necessary: I’ll remember it when I wake up.

And I do. I also decide to use some of Larry Levis for the blog post you are now reading.

And here is his Daphne -- the ending of the poem “The Two Trees,” in which he is so starved for connection that his only friends are two trees on campus. In springtime, one of the trees, not the sturdy oak but the one that seemed more feminine, “sleepier, more slender”

that seemed frail, but was really

Oblivious to everything. Simply oblivious to it,

With the pale leaves climbing one side of it,

An obscure sheen in them,

And the other side, for some reason, black bare,

The same, almost irresistible, carved indifference

In the shape of its limbs
As if someone's cries for help

Had been muffled by them once, concealed there,

Her white flesh just underneath the slowly peeling bark
—while the joggers swerved around me and I stared—
Still tempting me to step in, find her,

                           And possess her completely.  

DRAGONFLIES VERSUS JUSTICE

Now, just for the joy of it, some interesting facts about dragonflies:

The dragonfly can move at an amazing 45 miles an hour, hover like a helicopter fly backwards like a hummingbird, fly straight up, down and on either side. What is mind blowing is the fact that it can do this while flapping its wings a mere 30 times a minute while mosquitoes and houseflies need to flap their wings 600 and 1000 times a minute respectively. The dragonfly accomplishes its objectives with utmost simplicity, effectiveness and well, if you look at proportions, with 20 times as much power in each of its wing strokes when compared to the other insects. The best part is that the dragonfly does it with elegance and grace that can be compared to a ballet dancer.

The dragonfly has a 360-degree vision.

The dragonfly exhibits iridescence both on its wings as well as on its body. Iridescence is the property of an object to show itself in different colors depending on the angle and polarization of light falling on it.

Dragonflies have inhabited our planet for almost 300 million years.

The dragonfly is such an intricate and gorgeous little being that it’s easy to understand our bedazzlement when one appears while we are thinking about justice, perhaps, and how there are two kinds: justice meant as punishment, vengeance; and justice as fairness, as in equal pay for equal work. Anne Carson’s suggests that a dragonfly is much more interesting than ideas.

God’s Justice



In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.

On the day He was to create justice

God got involved in making a dragonfly



and lost track of time.

It was about two inches long

with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.



God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows

as it set about cleaning the transparent case of its head.

The eye globes mounted on the case



rotated this way and that

as it polished every angle.

Inside the case



which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank

God could see the machinery humming

and He watched the hum



travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail

and breathe off as light.

Its black wings vibrated in and out.



~ Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God


Charles:

Your dragonfly poem reminds me of the haiku about the dragonfly (“a dry stick: put on wings: a dragonfly”). They are both uplifting at the end.

So much wisdom in Judgment Day being every day. I love that.
You blog and your poems "give intellectual and esthetic pleasure of the sort that makes life worth living."

..."people were good or bad apparently in proportion to the amount of empathy they felt for others": Yes!

Love the information on dragonflies and the final poem by Anne Carson.

Oriana:

I know others too have said that every day is Judgment Day. We have to be accountable at a moment’s notice: here is the good I’ve done; here’s what I regret having done -- without dwelling too much on either.

POETRY’S WILL TO DARKNESS: LARRY LEVIS, “TO A WALL OF FLAME IN A STEEL MILL”

[Photo: Peyton Chung]

To a Wall of Flame in a Steel Mill, Syracuse, New York, 1969

Except under the cool shadows of pines,
The snow is already thawing
Along this road . . .
Such sun, and wind.
I think my father longed to disappear
While driving through this place once,
In 1957.
Beside him, my mother slept in a gray dress
While his thoughts moved like the shadow
Of a cloud over houses,
And he was seized, suddenly, by his own shyness,
By his desire to be grass,
And simplified.
Was it brought on
By the road, or the snow, or the sky
With nothing in it?
He kept sweating and wiping his face
Until it passed.
And I never knew.

But in the long journey away from my father,

I took only his silences, his indifference

To misfortune, rain, stones, music, and grief.

Now, I can sleep beside this road

If I have to,

Even while the stars pale and go out,

And it is day.

And I can keep secrets for years,

The way a stone retains a warmth from the sun,

It is because men like us

Own nothing, really.

I remember, once,
In the steel mill where I worked,
Someone opened the door of the furnace
And I glanced in at the simple,
Quick and blank erasures the flames made of iron,
Of everything on earth.
It was reverence I felt then, and did not know why,
I do not know even now why my father
Lived out his one life
Farming two hundred acres of gray Málaga vines
And peach trees twisted
By winter. They lived, I think,
Because his hatred of them was entire,
And wordless. I still think of him staring into this road

Twenty years ago,

While his hands gripped the wheel harder,

And his wish to be no one made his body tremble,

Like the touch

Of a woman he could not see,

Her fingers drifting up his spine in silence

Until his loneliness was perfect,

And she let him go –

Her laughter turning into these sheets of black

And glassy ice that dislodge themselves,

And ride slowly out,

Onto the thawing river.

~ Larry Levis, The Dollmaker’s Ghost

**

Recently I wrote: Poetry is the opposite of fear. Perhaps that was why Primo Levi became incredibly excited while reciting, in Auschwitz, the Ulysses Canto from Dante’s Inferno. I am still amazed that poetry can indeed be called the opposite of fear, considering that poetry tends to be so dark (“an unending funeral,” as Billy Collins said).  And this poem, irresistible to me starting with its title, contemplates nothingness, erasure, as a manifestation of the divine ("It was reverence I felt then, I don't know why").

Larry Levis is an ecstatic poet of the dark sort. We won’t find him dancing with the daffodils. But at one point he could be found working in a steel mill in Syracuse, New York. That’s how he supported himself while getting his M.A. in English. That’s how he got to see that annihilating “wall of flame.”

There is a lot of darkness in both fiction and drama, considering the dominance of tragedy in the literary canon (at least as taught in universities). Still, I think poetry is probably the number one genre when it comes to dealing with mortality. There aren't that many “happy poems.” It's almost a given that mortality/transience has to be present in a poem to give it depth. “We kissed briefly in the deathless spring,” D.A. Powell writes, and we admire the oxymoronic nature of that statement, “briefly” canceling “deathless” (and yet we say that love is eternal and spring is eternal, and that too is true). “To a Wall of Flame” is the most delightful poem about annihilation that I have ever come across.

First, the speaker notes that the snow is already thawing along the road. Then he makes the conjecture that his father, driving on this particular road with his wife asleep beside him, experienced a longing to “be simplified,” to cease being human, to be grass, to disappear. Levis makes this conjecture feel astonishingly real.

This is phantasmagoric poem. After all, Levis only imagines how his father felt, that he "longed to disappear" (but who hasn't had that longing?) Then there is the amazing imagined trembling at that wish, compared to the intimate touch of an imagined woman, her laughter making her a femme fatale, a Snow Queen perhaps (life is a cruel joke?) – or maybe the allegory of the human, since laughter keeps us from crying at all this disappearing. And it’s of course not only "men like us" who own nothing – ultimately no human being owns anything, except for a moment of delusion when we forget we can’t take it with us.

When I first read the poem, I liked it only from the steel mill part on. This is still the part I like best and find awesome, but I wouldn't want to lose the image of the mother sleeping in the car "in a gray dress." It's part of the mystery of poetry that details such as that gray dress are magical, and her sleep, and the father's trembling, and the marvelous accuracy of the sheets of ice being black as the ice is at the point of thawing in the river.

If you are having trouble with this poem, re-read it from

I remember, once,

In the steel mill where I worked

-- and just let yourself be seized by the power of the unfolding images, starting with the wall of flame as a kind of altar, and ending with the sheets of black ice sliding into the river.  

Marjorie:

I liked that poem by Larry Levis so much I sent it to one of my friends who is approaching 80 and is thus concerned about mortality. He is also a poetry lover and would-be poet. All he saw in Levis’ poem was that it was depressing, and he asked why I liked it.  Below is my answer.

**

I respond to a poem not only because of what it means but also because of how it says what it means.  This poem deals with a universal concern:  annihilation, nothingness after death.  For you, that makes it a depressing poem.  For me, that makes it an empathic poem.

Levis is also doing lots of skillful things in this poem.  There’s the early surprise of:  “I think my father longed to disappear . . . ” with its implied question for a reader, “How can anyone do that?” There are two women in the poem — the wife, sleeping beside her husband and thus unable to see. She’s in the early part of the poem. Then we have the ghost woman, who can’t be seen but runs fingers along the father’s spine in the later part of the poem. 

I love evocative images and similes.  In this poem we have:  “ . . . his thoughts moved like the shadow of a cloud over houses.” This is a wonderful image of sadness.  There’s mystery when Levis says, “And I never knew.”  What is it he never knew?  He’s giving us a poem about what transpired in his father’s mind. Is he simply using a superlative “never” to suggest that he absolutely didn’t understand when he was younger but understands now what it was like for his father? 

The ending touch, with the ghost woman who lets the man go, sends chills up MY spine.  And what about this ending image of the ghost woman’s laughter “turning into these sheets of black and glassy ice that dislodge themselves, and ride slowly out, onto the thawing river”?  My Lord!  You know how someone “breaks” into laughter and laughter comes in separate chunks?  The ice is a metaphor for the cold laughter of the ghost woman but also an image of eventual dissolution.  Annihilation as a sort of melting.

Of course, I am partial to father poems and have more than one favorite among them!

**

Oriana: 

Thank you, Marjorie, for the superb analysis.

This poem is an astonishing feat in more than one way, for instance in the dramatic use of both fire and ice. What immediately astonished me, however, was that Levis was inside his father's mind, and rendered all of this in realistic detail, as though it did happen, as though the father indeed "longed to disappear." This whole passage is wonderful, and so startling, I don't think there is any other poem in which anything like this is said:

I think my father longed to disappear
While driving through this place once,
In 1957.
Beside him, my mother slept in a gray dress
While his thoughts moved like the shadow
Of a cloud over houses,
And he was seized, suddenly, by his own shyness,
By his desire to be grass,
And simplified.
                                 

     ~ "seized by his own shyness" is a wonderful perception. The father is so shy he doesn't want to live anymore, at least not as himself.

The father is also presented as very stoical, which is confirmed by other poems we'll see him in. He dutifully goes about work, even though he hates his vinyard and his peach orchard

I do not know even know why my father
Lived out his one life
Farming two hundred acres of gray Málaga vines
And peach trees twisted
By winter. They lived, I think,
Because his hatred of them was entire,
And wordless.

I love the phrase "peach trees twisted by winter." The father himself is like winter, and the peach trees (peach being a symbol of sensual delight) are like him too, able to live on hatred.

And then we come to the erotic part, the "love-death" scene of this poem, where the father's "wish to be no one" makes him tremble and he feels the invisible woman's fingers "drifting up his spine in silence." Could there be a more perfect word here than "drifting"? And then the fabulous fusion of laughter and black sheets of melting ice. There is no need for me to add anything to Marjorie's exciting analysis of that final fused image.

This poem bears multiple re-reading. It becomes more vivid each time. And yet, for all we know, none of this happened! Talk about making the imaginary real . . . 

What further enlarges the poem is the existence of a literary and cinemanic tradition of encounter with the figure of Death. Death and the Maiden, The Erlking, conversations with Death in Bergman's Seventh Seal, Death as a beautiful woman in Cocteau's Orpheus . . .  and many more, including a handsome executioner in my own "April Snow" – but nothing quite like the figure in this poem: an invisible woman, intimate as a lover – with the wife asleep next to the man.

Marjorie:

I loved the twist on the two women in Levis’ poem—the woman who can’t see and the woman who can’t be seen.  But Levis is also playing with the opposites of fire and ice.  This made me think of Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice.” I wondered if Levis was thinking of that poem too.

Oriana:

I also thought about Frost's famous poem. Wouldn't it be magnificent if Larry Levis were still alive, and we could ask him? We'd email him, and given the kind of person he was, I think we'd get a satisfying answer.

I met him once at SDSU. He was already quite famous, and yet shy, almost self-effacing in a charming way. He and I talked about Zbigniew Herbert, whom Levis had known from Herbert's year at Cal State LA, having been his assistant. Levis was into vivid details also in conversation. He could drop his shyness and be very emotionally expressive, then hunch up into shyness again, with an almost apologetic smile. He was this big, husky country boy who perhaps felt awkward in academia. You could easily imagine him doing heavy farm labor, or any "macho" kind of work. (He was the opposite of Jack Gilbert that way. Gilbert frequently evokes the steel mills of Pittsburgh, but his slight build and intense intellectuality made me think of someone who frequents Parisian literary cafés.)

From Larry’s reading, I remember only two lines, which engraved itself on my psyche forever, and sent me a dream about being a bride swathed in endless layers of white garments, with a crone-like woman at my side who says to me, “If you wear only white, you are dressed for suicide.” I have no doubt that what the crone said in my dream originated in these two lines by Levis:

The white wedding dress is suicidal,

I know how the bride trembles putting it on.

He made a charming comment about those lines that I wish I remembered. But back then, who imagined that Larry would be leaving us so soon, dying of a heart attack at only forty-nine?

In an important way, though, he is still with us. Every time we read one of his poems, he speaks to us with a living voice.

Michael (from Guatemala)

Vision comes from beyond the words, doesn't it? It's where we stand along Levis's road, isn't it? Or are we riding in the car as Levis's father drives? Because this poem for me isn't about annihilation. Just the opposite. Levis's father is dazzled by the Lure, and feels the desire to live more fully. He is quietly desperate to be seen (as his sleeping, gray-clad wife could not see) and to wriggle free of the vines and peach trees. I felt his grip on the steering wheel, that need to turn from the rutted path, to make that left turn, and never stop driving. Ah, to be free from pruning the peach trees and the dullness of his wife. And finally, knowing the touch of the woman's fingers up his spine will never be realized, he allows the dream to float away, broken black ice drifting, melting into the stream of every man's despair--just as the flames erased the iron. And Levis felt reverence for this, this acceptance.

But then, that's my road.

**

Michael also provided this explanation of “the Lure”:

The Lure is a concept developed in Process theology – I think it's a John Cobb contribution. I equate it with Aristotle's entelechy, the will to thrive, the Moreness, the life that calls, the extravagant, gratuitous beauty of this world and beyond . . .

Oriana:

Thank you, Michael, for a very perceptive comment. Yes, we are riding in the car that the father drives, and we can see that the father is having an anxiety attack, or something close to it. He feels extremely lonely – as you point out, he is not “seen” by his wife. In fact, no one knows him. His hatred of tending the vines and the twisted peach trees remains unspoken. And even if he did speak about it, who would understand? People would likely tell him to count his blessings: his land and his family.

Why is the wife dressed in gray? Why are the vines gray? Especially when it comes to the wife’s dress, note that what we have here is only Larry Levis’s imagination, so he could have chosen another color if he didn’t want the symbolism of gray. A red dress would have an opposite connotation. But this grayness, along with the wife’s sleep, is the dailiness of marriage. So yes, I can easily see the father as “quietly desperate,” and occasionally feeling the urge to escape that gray “life of quiet desperation.”

Most people have experienced the potential richness of life, entelecheia, as opposed to the gray actuality. I call it the Gap. This is the realm in which we badly need to know what, if anything, can be changed. If change is not possible, then a stoic acceptance, exemplified by the father in this amazing poem, can be admirable (imagine if the father constantly complained, or drank, or threatened to commit suicide – or all of the above; or think of Tony Hoagland’s father, who left his family for a flight attendant).

Pondering the Gap and how we learn to live with it reminded me of “To My Ghost Reflected in the Auxvasse River,” and especially this passage:

When you would turn on the radio

And dance alone, in the kitchen

Of the diner,

I kept sweeping.

“Like father like son,” I want to sigh . . .  But we know that later the son did manage to escape into a more fulfilling life.  He says,

But in the long journey away from my father,

I took only his silences, his indifference

To misfortune, rain, stones, music, and grief.

~ though in another famous poem, he mentions his father’s listening to Vivaldi – and Vivaldi’s music brims with spirit. Still, the father mainly suffers in stoic silence. His son chose words, chose music.

Obviously, whatever it is that we call spirit or soul prefers music and dancing to mundane chores. The chores must be done, however. We try to have some music and dancing also, because we will not be here forever. Some believe that if we do the chores diligently, we will have our reward in heaven, but there is no certainty of that. Larry Levis does not believe in heaven, except what fragments of it, what moments of beauty and bliss and fulfillment, we can enjoy in this life.

Personally, I am into Less-ness, but then my inner life is very rich, sometimes overwhelmingly so (or so it feels to an extreme introvert like myself).  I need the kind of Less which leads to More.  Sometimes when you concentrate on something very small, a great wealth starts unfolding.  But then I understand that by Moreness, Michael does not mean “more toys” (as in “The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys”). He means a qualitatively richer life, the opposite of father’s loneliness and his unspoken hatred of the gray vines and “peach trees twisted by winter.” That richer life includes glimpses of the sublime – including the wall of flame, even if the meaning of the flame is erasure. The sublime is an encounter with an energy greater than our own. We respond with awe. That is why Levis is an ecstatic poet: he worships the flame, and hears the music (be it of laughter) in the slide of the melting sheets of ice.

Una:

Maybe the reason I haven't commented on this poem is that I found it depressing.

It shows a quiet desperation which many of us feel, and hearing it the way he writes it makes me so sad, How many of us want to chuck it all like Gauguin but like LL's father soldier on.

Oriana:

The victory in this poem lies in its background, so to speak: the father’s “soldiering on” made it possible for Levis to get a good education and enjoy the life of the mind, as well as the closeness to nature he developed growing up in the countryside.

When people speak of chucking it up like Gauguin, they tend to forget that you have to be an accomplished painter first. And that takes a lot of hard work. And what Gauguin did in Tahiti was work. Painting paradise is work. We see only the finished product and it looks so easy and spontaneous.  We see the inspiration, not the perspiration. But take a moment to see Gauguin drenched in sweat, not only because of the heat, but also because of the inevitable frustration. And I don’t mean the frustration because the paintings weren’t selling and he was regarded as a failure; I mean the frustration of getting stuck, of knowing the composition doesn’t quite work, or the colors are not right, but not yet having the solution.  


Any work, any mode of life, requires some “soldiering on.” Maturity means, among other things, the ability to carry on with “grace under pressure.”

But to get back to the poem: as Marjorie points out, its triumph lies in the beautiful language and imagery, in the artistic perfection when the ending fuses the laughter of the ghost woman with the sliding of the sheets of black, thawing ice into the river – river being a also the river of time.

Lucrezia:

"Beside him, my mother slept in a gray dress":  this is death.

The snow, the furnace:  the white whale.

I have never felt this way.

Faith is the opposite of fear.

Oriana:

That reminds me of my Aphrodite poem – I think an early version had the line

"Faith is the opposite of fear, says Lucrezia."

-- inspired by you. By the way, I’ve realized that Letters to Lucrezia is a collection I can simply self-publish. It’s dear to my heart.

I think we all have faith in something, in various things, or we couldn’t live. Levis could be called an atheist, but he had a strong sense of the sacred. In one of his essays, Milosz says that the real division is not believers and unbelievers, but those who have a sense of the sacred, and those who don’t – and that probably we are born that way. I think people who have a sense of beauty do have a sense of the sacred. It’s a deep part of the psyche. 

LARRY LEVIS: A FINE TREMBLING

TO MY GHOST REFLECTED IN THE AUXVASSE RIVER

I’m tired of praising the dead

Tired of ghosts.

I am just sitting in my yard, watching

Thin clouds move above me,

And the grasses are bending in one direction.

This wind has no friend but me;

It is Spring,

And I am addressing you, Spirit,

Because the wheat ripens for no one,

Not for the sky,

Not even for you.

And you, who do not believe in words,

Care less for my life than for a broken comb you’ve left

In a movie theater, or in a bar.

Each day at noon

I used to close my eyes,

And lie alone in the dark, listening.

And you never spoke,

Never uttered the thin prayer that was me.

Or on the long bridges when I drove to work,

You would stare into the river

Until you made yourself think of nothing.

And when you found you could do it,

You were thrilled,

You were like a spider

Moving laboriously, and without thoughts, over a bead

Of water shining in its web.

You stayed out later, and later.

You loved knives, bars, drugs, music.

When you would turn on the radio

And dance alone, in the kitchen

Of the diner,

I kept sweeping.

You have become pure, finally.

You have become that silence just under the water

Where the river turns brown, and slows,

And a stillness rides alone

Over that place –

And I just drive past it, now.

If only I could reach in and pull you out,

Or if only you were a fish,

And then, if you did not speak to me,

As a fish did once, in a dream,

I would slice you up to the stomach and slap

Your head against stone.

And make you flesh,

Even while these flies dance on the rocks.

But I am a stranger, I will pass,

And always, when I bend to drink

From this place, I come up with nothing, with

Broken water, a fine

Trembling in my hands,

Which must be you.

~ Larry Levis, from The Dollmaker’s Ghost

**

For me, the poem starts here (pardon this workshop habit of saying: “The poem starts here”):

It is Spring,

And I am addressing you, Spirit,

Because the wheat ripens for no one . . .

And you, who do not believe in words,

Care less for my life than for a broken comb you’ve left

In a movie theater, or in a bar.

Each day at noon

I used to close my eyes,

And lie alone in the dark, listening.

And you never spoke,

Never uttered the thin prayer that was me.

~ This is a complaint. The transcendent part of the young man, maybe that “larger self” that Adam Zagajewski mentions in his poems, does not seem interested in its container, so to speak – the daily self of the poet. Eventually that part of him becomes “a silence just under the water,” and, later “a fine trembling” in the speaker’s hands. And yet this is not a negative poem, when you consider the beauty of it, especially the beauty of the last lines. The poem illustrates one of the paradoxes of poetry: the content may seem despairing, and yet the reader is left in a state of hushed awe, and nourished with beauty.

Lisa:

I can't help replying again, in reference to the self becoming bigger than one's self. Obviously not even Levis' ghost grew bigger than himself, and he ardently stays shut up (and down) in his own pity. Then, there is "Salmon Boy," who becomes caught up in his separate ego-self until his father spears him and his mother filets him- so that he is left out, exposed to the sun, to become the food for his people - to become one with them, or to become integrated, or to become larger than himself. This is the ancient act of initiation; this is the ancient act of the father, who must give the blow, in order for his son to become "bigger than himself" and his own self- infatuation or self-pity. Oh, I am a bit tired of the one who chooses to remain a stranger and not dip down into the river, not see his own "ghost spirit," not make of it a fish.

Salmon Boy, by David Wagoner

That boy was hungry. His mother gave him Dog Salmon,

Only the head. It was not enough,

And he carried it hungry to the river's mouth

And fell down hungry. Salt water came from his eyes,

And he turned over and over. He turned into it.

And that boy was swimming under the water

With his round eyes open. He could not close them.

He was breathing the river through his mouth.

The river's mouth was in his mouth. He saw stones

Shimmering under him. Now he was Salmon Boy.

He saw the Salmon People waiting. They said, "This water

Is our wind. We are tired of swimming against the wind.

Come to the deep, calm valley of the sea.

We are hungry too. We must find the Herring People."

And they turned their green tails. Salmon Boy followed.

He saw Shell-Walking-Backwards, Woman-Who-Is-Half-Stone.

He heard the long, high howling of Wolf Whale,

Seal Woman's laughter, the whistling of Sea Snake,

Saw Loon Mother flying through branches of seaweed,

Felt Changer turn over far down in his sleep.

He followed to the edge of the sky where it opens

And closes, where Moon opens and closes forever,

And the Herring People brought feasts of eggs,

As many as stars, and Salmon Boy ate the stars

As if he flew among them, saying Hungry, Hungry.

But the Post of Heaven shook, and the rain fell

Like pieces of Moon, and the Salmon People swam,

Tasting sweet, saltless wind under the water,

Opening their mouths again to the river's mouth,

And Salmon Boy followed, full-bellied, not afraid.

He swam fastest of all. He leaped in the air

And smacked his blue-green silvery side, crying, Eyo!

I jump! again and again. Oh, he was Salmon Boy!

He could breathe everything! He could see everything!

He could eat everything! And then his father speared him.

He lay on the riverbank with his eyes open,

Saying nothing while his father emptied his belly.

He said nothing when his mother opened him wide

To dry in the sun. He was full of the sun.

All day he dried on sticks, staring upriver.

**

Oriana:

Well, I am glad there is the "feeding the people" communal meaning that we can give to the Salmon Boy's final condition.

Larry Levis’s poem delights me with its marvelous lines, and frustrates me at the same time – and then delights me again when we get to the "fine trembling."

If not for the title, I could see this as an address to God – Kurt Vonnegut's God the Utterly Indifferent. It's possible that this kind of god loves humanity, but not on an individual basis. And perhaps the poem can be perceived as being addressed simultaneously to the speaker's spirit, a detached internal Witness and fearless dancer, and to God the Utterly Indifferent. It's not Teresa of Avila exclaiming, "If only we took care to remember what a Guest we have within  . . . "

But let us remember that the image knows more than the poet, and while the speaker seems dejected not to receive more ego satisfaction, to be only a temporary container, if that much, the images of water, shining, stillness, the "silence just under the water" and finally the "fine trembling" add up to beauty and mystery. Anyone who has had the experience of filling his hands with water from a stream and seeing the fine trembling knows how wonderful that looks and feels, that little bit of water dancing in your hands, shining and alive. I am in awe that Larry Levis identifies this beautiful trembling with his spirit. Even though before that he says, "I come up with nothing," that is eclipsed by the luminosity of the final image and the discovery. And the lyricism seduces me too.

Aside from the ending, the part about the spirit dancing in the diner kitchen while the young man keeps sweeping is also unforgettable. So we have this man doing a menial job, but his spirit – or the Spirit – celebrates himself. Later we get the flies dancing on the rocks – dancing, not just swarming. Come to think of it, the fine trembling could also be seen as a kind of dancing. It's an image combining fragility and a great, invincible vitality.

Alas, there is no human community here, and the greater wisdom that would come from relatedness. This could be read as a portrait of an isolated individual sulking that Something Greater does not deign to speak to him. Inside our mind is a cosmic mind, the Upanishads say. Presumably the cosmic mind is connected with everything, but we have to know how to tune in to it – maybe by losing the preoccupation of the self. Some believe there is an angel inside us, or walking near us – an immigrant who makes us long for another place. Or maybe, on the contrary, it’s an angel of this life, this world, not one of inaccessible angels in Rilke but the Stevensian Angel of Reality, one who says Look! Look now while there is a chance.

Because Levis does this looking at the world – he does not merely contemplate himself – there is a poem behind the poem here, a poem of images wiser than the poet. For me those images align along the lines of an amazing New York Times article called "Happy like God." Let me offer just one sentence of it:

To be like God is to be without time, or rather in time with no concern for time, free of the passions and troubles of the soul, experiencing something like calm in the face of things and of oneself.

And here is Levis:

You have become that silence just under the water

Where the river turns brown, and slows,

And a stillness rides alone

Over that place –

Levis says it better, because he uses the power of images, so he speaks beyond himself, in a larger fashion – even if he doesn't quite know it. He uses archetypal nature images such as water. As Jung said, "He who speaks through archetypes speaks with a thousand voices."

Lisa:

Oriana, an apology for what sounded a bit reactionary. I was very wrapped up with a student of mine – one who I adore, one who is really suffering, and this poem you sent really brought it up for me! This "being a stranger" – lost in the world even to oneself, was just too painful to face this last week. However, I am revisiting this poem, which I do love, and which is so very beautiful. 

This "you have become pure...where the river turns brown," and this ghost of oneself that is irretrievable and was, perhaps, never within grasp anyway, 

this "nothingness" which is the water of life itself –that which makes our body say to itself, 
"Yes, I am here in all of this brilliant wonder."

**

Oriana:

Your post is lovely, showing your sensitivity both on the human level – the suffering student – and on the cosmic level of union with nature. 

I was indeed somewhat confused by your initial reaction, but no problem. You did make it all the more clear for me that in many poems Larry Levis is indeed this perpetual isolated adolescent, though in his mature work he can write some magical lines, and the self-pity universalizes, transfers onto all of us.

Nevertheless, I think human life has a meaning chiefly within a social network, and very few can sustain communing with nature as a source of meaning. And Levis does have some excellent poems that center on others, be it his father or the Mexican grape pickers. He makes those people enter our psyche. I think one of the central tasks of a poet is to expand our empathy.

Going back to the poem, just the fact that Levis addresses his spirit/Spirit is already amazing. True, there is a poetic tradition of the poet speaking to his soul, but Larry's poem feels quite different.

I would like you to read Szymborska's poem on the soul because I think that it says some of the same things, though it says it very differently. Levis uses the power of the image, risking obscurity; Szymborska is plain and clear, and we admire her mainly because what she says is so unexpected. Both poets appear to say that the soul/spirit has its own agenda.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

~ Wisława Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh

**

After Levis's lush images, we may feel disappointed by this kind of witty, cerebral poem. Tough . . . It takes all kinds. I want to point out the similarities, though. Here too the soul is very elusive, and mostly absent from tasks that bore it. Note:

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

and note also this stanza:

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

*

I also love it that the soul settles

Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

~ or growing older. It's definitely astonishing. Don't we always feel younger -- much younger -- than we are? In dreams, don't we even look younger by far, not to mention that the dead are both dead and alive -- though in a dream, when we look in the mirror, we may see our hair suddenly gone white. Let us sit a while with this astonishment, let's offer it food and drink.

Actually the line that haunts me is the one about the soul's preferring clocks with pendulums. You don't see those very often anymore, and what a loss! There is a meditative quality about the pendulum's going back and forth, back and forth . . .

Even just the round dial and the march of the three hands, each at a different speed, those are evocative as well. Again, the power of the image. What is happening to our world as we go digital? What about that ad for a CD that will preserve your photos for 300 years?

Lisa:

On a more spiritual note . . . or are we always playing one spiritual note 
after another, even as we brush our damn teeth one more time and head 
off to work (smile - hopefully fresh and white), here is a response
to Salmon Boy from one of my music making, Kirtan playing, dear, dear 
friends:

Somehow, I think this is all of our fate . . . like the crucifixion... or
the death of the personal self. At some point, life is going to turn
us all back into itself... into God... into love. The Sufis believe
that the true idol to be destroyed is the self; and love, passionate
love, is the Divine's method of awakening us to that which is beyond
our self. Thus the lover may dissolve into love . . .

Kahlil Gibran says about love:

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred
bread for God's sacred feast.

**

Oriana:

My metaphor is giving blood rather than crucifixion. I'm still very uncomfortable with the last image in the Salmon Boy poem. But I do like Gibran's poem, and yes, life does that to us, to women in particular  . . . it teaches us that it's not about our little isolated self. Meaning lies in how we touch the lives of others.

Emily Dickinson put it well:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

(919)

Note that kindness to animals certainly counts for Dickinson. Our connection is not limited only to human beings.

I do not remember the source, but somewhere I read the beautiful statement that if you plant a tree, that already means you have not lived in vain.

I love this fusion of mystical insight from all traditions. Anna Kamienska says

I don't believe in the other world
But I don't believe in this one either
unless it's pierced by light

My ideal is to live from greatness, from generosity. For many years, I lived – at least in private – from my wounds. People kept saying, "You have so much to give," but I felt there was no right outlet, no takers. What I had to give was not wanted, I thought. The riches of my psyche were of no interest to others, my poems too difficult, too full of ideas, and my ideas too complex. But about two years ago – better late than never – I saw that the notion that life isn't long enough to recover from one's wounds need not be true. It's not about healing or not healing one’s wounds. It's about transcending them through the daily practice of generosity.