Not in my capacity as a Literature student V

To the Angelbeast -Eduardo C. Corral

For Arthur Russell

All that glitters isn’t music.

Once, hidden in tall grass,
I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air:
doe after doe of leaping.

You said it was nothing
but a trick of the light. Gold
curves. Gold scarves.

Am I not your animal?

This is one of those poems where I really do not get the point of, but just seems really interesting. The opening line, a tweak on the saying “all that glitters is not gold”, is memorable, and then the rehash of gold as a “trick of the light” ties it in pretty well. “Am I not your animal” is such a strange question to ask, but it sounds as though the speaker and the “you” are pretty intimate.

You’d wait in the orchard for hours
to watch a deer
break from the shadows.

You said it was like lifting a cello
out of its black case.

This is the good part purely because I like the imagery of the deer peeling away from the shadow like a rich brown cello. Feels like the stripping away of something, and it makes the speaker sound vulnerable. This is the kind of imagery that one would never be able to write if they were not drawing from their personal experience.

Expecting -Kevin Young

Grave, my wife lies back, hands cross
her chest, while the doctor searches early
for your heartbeat, peach pit, unripe

plum—pulls out the world’s worst
boom box, a Mr. Microphone, to broadcast
your mother’s lifting belly.

The whoosh and bellows of mama’s body
and beneath it: nothing. Beneath
the slow stutter of her heart: nothing.

The doctor trying again to find you, fragile
fern, snowflake. Nothing.
After, my wife will say, in fear,
impatient, she went beyond her body,
this tiny room, into the ether—
for now, we spelunk for you one last time

lost canary, miner of coal
and chalk, lungs not yet black—
I hold my wife’s feet to keep her here—

and me—trying not to dive starboard
to seek you in the dark water. And there
it is: faint, an echo, faster and further

away than mother’s, all beat box
and fuzzy feedback. You are like hearing
hip-hop for the first time—power

hijacked from a lamppost—all promise.
You couldn’t sound better, break-
dancer, my favorite song bumping

from a passing car. You’ve snuck
into the club underage and stayed!
Only later, much, will your mother

begin to believe your drumming
in the distance—my Kansas City
and Congo Square, this jazz band

vamping on inside her.

Two consecutive poems got to do with music! This poem is relatively straightforward — about a would-be father listening to the heartbeat of his unborn baby — and yet it inspires a fresh wave of awe and wonder and hope that reminds us of the beauty of life. It is written like a diary intended for the child to read later on (the child being directly addressed as “you”) and that’s what makes it so tender. The slightly strange thing is the transition of the wife’s identity, from “my wife” to “your mother”, and it feels like she has been distanced. It also marks a change of relationship status with the child in the equation and it is mildly unsettling.

Next, Please -Philip Larkin

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Larkin is a poet with a very sharp mind. He does not rely on pretty words, but his words are deliberate and memorable. The first two lines are striking because of how adequately they diagnose our humanity. The grandness of the approach, “the armada of promises” (armada being a fleet of military ship) encapsulates the terrible habit of expectancy that humans inevitably fall prey to.

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead wit golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it’s
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

“Wretched stalks of disappointment” is a really vivid imagery: the bowed heads of flowers almost like the disappointed droop of shoulders, and the idea of holding flowers seem to be associated with mourning. It really adds to the sense of deflation when it immediately follows the grandeur of the arriving fleet in the horizon.

“It’s no sooner present than it turns to past” is such a clever play on words because these promises can sail right past you, or it is so fleeting that it becomes the past as soon as it is granted.

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

This poem only gets better as we get to the end. There is something so vivid in the “huge and birdless silence” and the wake of dead water that is stuns me. The ocean is never quiet, with the sound of sucking waves and overhead gulls, so this sudden stillness, this quietness watching the black-sailed ship dock is so dreadful. It reminds me of death and the end, like watching the inevitable doom, or a grave minute of silence.

I think that is the entire point of using the conceit of the ships. Ships are often bustling with wealth from trade, or at least with some celebratory cry of send off or welcome back from a long voyage. One expects it to be a place full of vitality, and this very expectation is complacency. We are on the safety of land, waiting for things to befall us; we are not there on-board working hard to change the stagnation of our lives because of a reluctance to experience the turbulence of the sea. I think I really appreciate Larkin because he is not only a poet, but also someone with a very sharp insight on life and the human condition. What he has to say in his poems makes his words so compelling.

Latest Face -Philip Larkin

Latest face, so effortless
Your great arrival at my eyes,
No one standing near could guess
Your beauty had no home till then;
Precious vagrant, recognise
My look, and do not turn again.

Admirer and admired embrace
On a useless level, where
I contain your current grace,
You my judgment; yet to move
Into real untidy air
Brings no lasting attribute –
Bargains, suffering, and love,
Not this always-planned salute.

A love poem, and Larkin writes love like he is on his knees holding your hand, really sincerely, but really maturely and always with a sense of proper distance. The latest face and her beauty takes residence in his eyes, quietly falling into infatuation. “Recognise my look, and do not turn again” seems very Phantom of the Opera too. However, there is something rather sinister underpinning this relationship, seeing how the lover is reduced only to her face, like a floating mask, and is the “latest”, like a passing trend. Things are for appearances, “a useless level”, and is stagnant at a place not deep enough for real passions and tumult to break the “always-planned salute”. Salute is obviously not a natural or comfortable position to be in, and perhaps this tender relationship is one that keeps the speaker treading on egg shells and constantly cautious.

Lies grow dark around us: will
The stature of your beauty walk?
Must I wade behind it, till
Something’s found – or is not found-
Far too late for turning back?
Or, if I will not shift my ground,
Is your power actual – can
Denial of you duck and run,
Stay out of sight and double round,
Leap from the sun with mask and brand
And murder and not understand?

To further the dispassion in the relationship, it is not love between two people, but one of them is a “stature of your beauty”, something lofty, like a magnificent mirage outwardly perfection. The speaker has an option to wade after this vision to a point of no return, or to stand off and resist it. The contrast of “walk” and “duck and run” highlights the difference in intensity between the either choices respectively — to deny and “stay out of sight” is like an escape, a fugitive, something that is harder to do and elicits guilt. It is easier to give in and allow the relationship to continue.

The final two lines, with the “mask and brand” (a sword) calls to mind some rogue musketeer, ruthless with regards to murder. I struggle to understand what Larkin means exactly, but the final question seems pleading: for this face to spare some compassion, for this lover to try to understand his heart. To me it seems like a “you hurt me and you don’t even know it” thing. Regardless, the rhyme in this last stanza is gradually starting to creep in, and the final two lines create auditory closure and I think it wraps up the poem nicely.