August April blows worse and harder
than this, a horrid opening line.
Three critics – one Feminist,
another Marxist, and the last a close reader
- after the Vanderbilt school of thought –
have retired based solely on this line
of poetry, and on the woeful misuse of
allusion to Jeffers, Eliot and a guy named
John I read on the internet.
John I read on the internet.
I of course profess naivety as an excuse:
do blow and hard on the same line
have to be phallic every time?
can’t worse
be qualitative without being a subtle class
statement based on Veblenian principles
that have no place in a Capitalist society?
and
no, I’m not sure what it says about me, the poet,
to have riffed on two such disparate figures as
Robinson and T.S., but I’m not certain it does
in fact signal some wistful dream of ocean’s bind
to man or a return to the primordial stew.
Maybe it does.
Maybe everything was so
subtly intended that it flew even beneath
the writer’s radar. Maybe, as suggested by a
non-poetry-reading friend of mine who was
trying to be both learned and kind, I really did
intend to signal that I’m lonely and sad without
you.
I have my doubts.
I thought I enjoyed
the sound of August April blows worse… et
cetera, but I had no idea what to do with it
beyond that, and was very close to scrapping
the entire heap and starting over. But I thought,
That would be giving in, that would signal that
I was defeated by this simple, if inane and motionless,
verse. I wanted to add a truer poetic verse,
one that would have recalled the Romantic era,
the great lyric works of Keats, or at least Duncan, where
I could drop some illusive beats about Iona or Sparta or
Helen’s jawline, and although neither the writer
nor the reader would have a clue why it was there
or what it was supposed to do
– poetry does something? news to me –
it would inhabit the poem, and
strike a classical note to an otherwise free-versed
ode to the decisions we make on how we are,
held past, in this wry, slothful race to finish next-
to-last.
Questions About this Exercise
1. The title indicates that there are things
not said: what are they, and would the poem
change if they were (said)?
2. The poet seems to want to adapt
a Renaissance tone throughout the first
six lines. How does this affect the last two
neo-Classical lines? Discuss.
3. There were gulls at the lake, the white on blue
of new emotions layered on old sentimentalities,
and for a brief moment, the shore held court,
a boundary between what is new and what is
known to be true.
4. Had the poem spent more time discussing the
fades and nuances of what is missed or lost when
past loves finally leave their gaps and crevices
in the heart of the lover, as opposed to the loved,
would you, as reader, have been:
more ___________
less ___________
engaged? Please check only one answer.
5. True or false:
Iona, as a referent, is evocative of the shadows
and shades of an idealized time, and indicates
that the poet longs to return to mistakes made,
and possibly, if possible, make corrections to
ensure that the past allows for rejections due.
7. Did you miss question six? and what to make of
question three?
8. In the last lines of the poem, the poet attempts
to mix metaphor and simile to say he loves you;
do you:
a) reread the last lines, still not see
love where none indicated, and
decide these questions invalid;
b) wonder at the odd tinge
of tingling hope that briefly passed
through you when you thought
the poet might mean you;
c) disregard poetry as vehicle for
things better left unsaid, and when
asked why, indicate this poem as
prime example;
d) with feigned praise and damnable
recognition, know that none of the
above is simply not an option.
©2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved
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