TOP14-DES13
This Old Poem #14:
W.S. Merwin’s The Speed Of Light
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 8/8/02
W.S. Merwin
is about as prototypical a Dead White Male as 1 can get. Yes, he’s male. Yes,
he’s white. Yes, he’s been creatively dead for the last 25-30 years. But it
goes even beyond that. He once had great potential. His 1st 4 books,
released in the 1960s, seemed to show him as an American Ted Hughes, with
talent. He would write dense, brief (page-length), poems that harkened back to
the didactic verse abundant in the Bible, Koran, & other religious books of
mystery. He even produced a couple of pretty good books of proems, which had the
potential to chart a distinctly American type of the form- beyond the grim
Deutscher sort, & deeper than the pallid American forms introduced by Robert
Bly, & his acolytes. Then, in the early 1970s, it all stopped. WSM seemingly
took a vow against actually writing anything of interest. His meticulous earlier
craftsmanship gave way to a formless sort of masturbatory nothingness,
exemplified by his desire to write almost nothing but these cliché-ridden,
unrevised pieces of tripe.
To WSM, &
his fellow DWMs, this was part of a ‘spiritual journey’- again some sort of
Eastern/Zen/Animist nonsense was used as a rationale for utter subservience of
politics & ideas for the rigors of true art. There were years abroad,
traveling on the NEA gravy train, expanding his mind & art, puffing his
resumé, conflating art with ideas of social science, ‘experimenting’ with
poetry- i.e.- justifying mass amounts of poetic crapola, etc. Granted, he was
not alone, but his life’s tale is almost a blueprint for a life (& talent)
wasted.
At the center
of this dystopic hulk of a career was WSM’s incredible revelation to ‘forego
punctuation’. What has followed have been many books of refried Brothers
Grimmian-type bits of nonpunctual doggerel- great, eh? Apropos of this total
reduction from potential poetic greatness to wasted poetic hack is this poem
which bears a title, The Speed Of Light, that has only been used about
12,000 times for published poems, & only a 100 or so many more times that for
non-published verse. Like the near totality of its nominal kindred, this poem is
garbage. As per TOP’s usual procedure let us looksy at the original, point out
what is stunningly obvious, suggest the revisions, & grade these suckers
out- I’ve got work to do!
The Speed Of Light
So gradual in those summers was the going***
of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not***
leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning
opening into the sky was something of ours
to have and keep and that the brightness we could not touch
and the air we could not hold had come to be there all the time
for us and would never be gone and that the axle***
we did not hear was not turning when the ancient car
coughed in the roofer’s barn and rolled out echoing
first thing into the lane and the only tractor
in the village rumbled and went into its rusty***
mutterings before heading out of its lean-to
into the cow pats and the shadow of the lime tree
we did not see that the swallows flashing and the sparks***
of their cries were fast in the spokes of the hollow
wheel that was turning and turning us taking us
all away as one with the tires of the baker's van
where the wheels of bread were stacked like days in calendars
coming and going all at once we did not hear
the rim of the hour in whatever we were saying
or touching all day we thought it was there and would stay
it was only as the afternoon lengthened on its***
dial and the shadows reached out farther and farther
from everything that we began to listen for what***
might be escaping us and we heard high voices ringing
the village at sundown calling their animals home
and then the bats after dark and the silence on its road
So, you say, Dan- this is too easy. Okay, go ahead & regale me with your wisdom. Sure, 1st off this poem is 29 lines long & could easily be ½ to 1/3 the length, lose nothing in the narrative, & in fact have parts heightened by the compression. Not bad- what about the enjambment? Well, I was about to get to that- 7 of the 29 lines are egregiously bad (***) & as many others are mediocre- they’re okay at the end lines, but leave the next lines to start off disrhythmically- the poem’s music is terrible. Which lines do you mean? Well, the line 11-12 break- rolled out echoing/first thing into the lane- serves no purpose. Au contraire- ye of non-deadness, unwhiteness, & lacking testes! WSM means to allow ideas to flow untrammeled by the imposition of things that have no bearing in how we communicate. You mean, punctuation? Yes. But the human mind & tongue does speak punctually- lest it never would have developed. Now, you’re being rational- besides- he’s experimenting! Not well, I’m afraid- note the lack of any rime scheme or syllabic justification for the line breaks. Hmmm…. But even were the poem technically sound it is ridden with clichés, & more- the dull use of words in near-clichés, & a predictable overall course that the poem tropes dully to. Like? Check out this snippet
....fast in the spokes of the hollow
wheel that was turning and turning us taking us
all away as one with the tires of the baker's van
where the wheels of bread were stacked like days in calendars
coming and going all at once we did not hear
the rim of the hour in whatever we were saying
or touching all day....
WSM tries to invert clichés such as a turning wheel, the endless days, & the meaninglessness of all- & later a sun dial’s face- yet while the phrasing is slightly different, it adds nothing new to the idea & the phrasing is utterly prosaic- in sound, tone, music- as well as idea. Damn, I’ve taught you well. Let’s now look at how I would revise it- then you can comment on it, as well.
Like Days
So gradual in those summers was the going
when the stars faded over the mountains
even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs of clear morning
opening into the sky like something of ours
to have and keep that brightness could not touch
the air we could not hold which had come to be there
for us and would never be gone like that the axle
we did not hear not turning when the ancient car
first thing in the village rumbled and went
into its mutterings before heading out into the cow pats
we did not see the swallows flashing and the sparks
of their cries were quick in the spokes of the hollow
wheel turning us as one with the tires of the baker's van
coming and going all at once we did not hear
the rim of the hour in whatever we were saying
or touching all day we thought it was there and would stay
it was only as the afternoon lengthened its dial
the shadows reached out farther and farther
from everything that we began to listen for what might be
escaping us the village at sundown calling their animals
I think you did a pretty god job, Dan. Thanks. I like the title change- like can take on more than just the metaphorical meaning, the word quick over fast is a better rime & its intonations of pregnancy work well- especially in a pseudo-philosophic poem like this. You pruned alot of excess narrative & description, which lets poem go faster- that’s good. By dropping at least 8 lines- although more should go!- you’ve weeded out much of the clichéd phrases & dull storyline. The last line’s limp Frostian attempt is nicely redacted into something ominous, weird, & a little mysterious. All-in-all, pretty good. You may have a career as a critic, or editor. That parting shot wasn’t called for.
Nonetheless, the poem is an improvement. But you are correct in asserting that a further trim would heighten the poem- although it might be almost unrecognizable from WSM’s original. The reason I only trimmed about ¼ of the poem was to retain at least a little of the poem’s WSM-ness. I grant it’s a very generic poem, but it needs a little roll left in it. Then again, perhaps not. This poem, without an infusion of something- idea, phrase, etc.- that is interesting, is doomed to remain passably mediocre, at best. Play with it yourself- have some fun, this poem really is a lump of clay waiting for an imbuement it never draws out of its reader. I think poems this generic ought to be rewritten by someone who cares for the common reader. WSM obviously no longer does.
Final Score: (1-100):
W.S. Merwin’s The Speed Of Light: 62
TOP’s
Like Days: 72
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