Water -Robert Lowell
It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,
and left dozens of bleak
white frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,
and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.
The first (and very long) sentence in this poem paints the setting where the memory took place, with a significant absence of humans (the “boatloads of hands” reduces the people to a part of a whole). In particular I love the way the houses were described as oyster shells. Land and sea seems to blend together and wherever this lobster town is, it feels isolated, stagnant, a place where people see more value in leaving rather than living there.
Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
From this distance in time
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,
but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.
The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away
flake after flake.
In this part of the poem, the line where the speaker is reliving the past and recalling it at present blurs. The distance of time which separates him and the memory alters his senses: the gray rock becomes black and rotting in his memories, some kind of decay, as if the sea that “drenched the rock” all day had not only literally torn the rock away, but also figuratively washes over the details of the past with the passage of time. Water, then, changes things slowly, “flake by flake”. We see a juxtaposition of water with the other conceit of the poem, the rock, which conveys a sense of immobility, unchangeability, some grounding force for the past. Water is soft and rocks are hard (duh), but water erodes rock (as the Chinese proverb goes, 水滴石穿), as time also washes away memories you are so certain you’d never forget.
One night you dreamed
you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.
We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.
I feel that the wharf-pile is a reference to the matchstick maze of weir in the third stanza of the poem, and the barnacles also reference the houses like oyster shells. Barnacles are pretty disgusting if you ask me, and pretty hard to pull off, which is similar but different from the oyster shells that are more valuable (they either have flesh or pearls to offer). Barnacles also only grow where there is decay, in line with the rotting rock, where time has passed and memories had been left in neglect. Hence, “you” who try to undo the inevitable decay of the past and cling onto the memory will only be met with the disappointment, as indicated by the last line of the poem. This entire poem reminds me of those wistful “I will love you forever” promises that are broken before forever is up.
Soft Wood (my favourite lines) -Robert Lowell
Sometimes I have supposed seals
must live as long as the Scholar Gypsy.
Even in their barred pond at the zoo they are happy,
and no sunflower turns
more delicately to the sun
without a wincing of the will.
At first it appears that seals = gypsy intellectuals because they are free and roaming, but I felt a little betrayed when the seals are actually zoo animals and therein is the sadness of that line: animal or human, caged or freed, you will all die anyways.
I love the sunflower image too, because anyone who had a stiff neck before would relate to how even the gentlest of movements will cause a little grimace. Sunflowers are compelled to turn to the sun and they cannot help it: such is the life. It’s such an attentive way of describing the pain of living.
Their square-riggers used to whiten
the four corners of the globe,
but it’s no consolation to know
the possessors seldom outlast the possessions,
once warped and mothered by their touch.
Shed skin will never fit another wearer.
Here, Lowell is describing the same white houses in Maine he referenced in “Water”. It is really nihilistic when he presents the contrast of imagined supremacy. We all would like to think that humans are superior to houses because we bought them and we are their owners, but haha we’d all die before our houses do so how does that make us feel? Also the last line is my favourite line.
each drug that numbs alerts another nerve to pain.
The last line of this poem right here is so quotable.
Waking Up Early Sunday Morning (my favourite lines) -Robert Lowell
No weekends for the gods now. Wars
flicker, earth licks its open sores,
fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance
assassinations, no advance.
Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life …
Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war – until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.
This is by far the most measured and exquisite way of describing the hatred of having to wake up early on a weekend. Drawing your attention to the line “only man thinning out his kind sound”, I was shook by the use of enjambment here because it conveys the sense of men thinning out his kind (mankind), the apocalyptic end. The exaggeration of the dread to the scale of wars, or planetary disasters, really drives the point home — waking up early on weekends suck and it is a sin.
Will Not Come Back (my favourite lines) -Robert Lowell
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you—
don’t blind yourself, you’ll not be loved like that.
The obvious device used here is comparison between others and the personal (I, our), which I think is also a very common… thought?… in relationships. There is always the awareness that you have other options and there might be a “perfect one”, and some people are forever hung up on those possibilities. I suppose that’s why most people might feel insecure about Love because to stay together is a choice and no one is obligated to forever choose you. I don’t know, whatever emotion was communicated in here is really painful.
Do Unto Others -Daniel Johnson
How many rocks would I stack
on my brother’s chest? A rock
for his beauty, a rock for his trust,and two for lips redder
than a boy’s should be.
Granite for his loveof birds; a chunk of quartz
shot through with pink.
For singing on car trips,hiding in the dryer, and flouncing
down Oak Street in my mother’s dress:
limestone, shale, sandstone, flint,limestone, shale, sandstone, flint.
This poem reminds me a lot of Troye Sivan in his “Bloom” music video and I’ll park that under strange associations I would never understand. I think it is a fairly straightforward poem but I just have to point out something really clever: the full saying goes “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. In this case the speaker is punishing the brother for not conforming to the gender norms, but the speaker would perhaps never be punished the same way because he/she conforms to gender normative. Which is why the title of the poem is only half of the saying because in truth what others would do unto you would never happen because he/she is protected by social norms? There are many ways to read this but I think this would be an interesting point to make if the poet intended it so.
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