PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The posting of a new poem by Patricia is always an EVENT!; always.  I hae been reading her poems for almost a year---and meeting her poems has been as incredible and satisfying a processs as, way back in October 1978, when I met the poems of Wallace Stevens.  And as rewarding.  And as challenging.  As with Pop Stevens, there is a detectable pattern in the structure and procedure of her poems; like his, sometimes it is obvious, and sometimes it has to be sought out; but at all times it is present.  Future commentors on her poetry---and they will be many, scholars and graduate students alike---may look back at my remarks with some amusement; as we, who love Stevens' work, are sometimes amused by the very early attempts to interpret his poetry.  That said as a preamble, let me now get to the poem.

   We begin with a cosmic astronomy, which gives her poems such "sweep" and "reach":  in this poem, Polaris, the pole star, the great star of navigation.  And we commence our journey through the poem, as the poem commences its journey through the realm of meaning.  And as she constructs the poem, she deploys very active verbs.  And here, I am going to mix my metaphor with simile, because this process is like the great sonata form in music; exposition of a theme, and then variations in which different instruments alter and develop the theme; this is how her verbs work in this poem.  And these verbs are like planets orbiting a stellar center of gravity which, in my reading, is located in the last two lines of the third stanza---when the person to whom the poem is addressed is declared, or given the privilege, to have been "all my suns and moons," and the vast meaning of this profound statement is followed by a coy, maybe even teasing, ellipsis.

   The sonata form of this poem now begins to present its second theme, which will, in an overturn of expectations (like the playfulness of some of Hayden's symphonies), become the main theme, making all that has preceded it an exposition, from which it now swerves, and we have more active verbs or verbal motions---the chief of which is, in my opinion, "faint explosions to the / beat of a moon / that is equal to Heaven / but walks beside me, / and it's a romance . . ."  We have now been shown a second center of gravity; and those planterary verbs I mentioned above are now shown to be orbiting a binary star.  And, in following these complex orbits (and great beauty can exist in complexity!) we find, in the final stanza, the arrival, the conclusion, of the journey which Polaris guided us into when the poem began.  And here she discloses one of her most important, most radical, metaphors and observations about human exstence; which I will try to state, in my interpretation, in my next paragraph.

    We are all finite creatures.  We reside on earth for a limited amount of time.  And, in that time, we arrange our subjective realities as mirrors of our personalities.  My personal library does not contain very many books, but those that it contains reflects my personality (or, some might say, my lack thereof).  I listen to Dvorak's New World Symphony but not his others, because they do not mean as much, personally, to me.  I prefer Karloff's performances as Frankenstein's Monster to all others (before or since) because I think he nailed it at a level no other has ever reached.  I sign my poems "Starward" and not the mundane name on my tax return because it means more to me.  In my limited time on earth, I have gathered around me those elements from the available reality that best reflect, and minister to, my personality (or, as some have suggested, lack thereof).  This is the "mirror of everything of worth" that the poem has brought us to as the destination of the journey we began to navigate with the appearance of Polaris.  The last two lines of the final stanza contain three clauses set off by commas.  And these are like the three great E-flat chords with which Mozart concludes the brilliant overture to The Magic Flute---three knocks on the door of a ritual mystery, "everything of worth, / to eery place unexplored / and absolute and . . . / real"; and at this door, our journey, our sonata which is now revealed as an overture, triumphantly exults in three solid, knocks for admission by saying, [and the ellipses are mines, for emphasis] "I have . . . at last . . . arrived."

   In this comment, I have only scratched the surface of the poem's form and process.  Whole dissertations could be written on this, and I confidently predict that this will be done.  But, my comments are like Admiral Peary's steel spike driven into the ice of what he thought was the site of the North Pole:  it proved he was the first person to try to locate it, even if others did so more accurately than he did (and it was proven that he had miscalculated).  I know others will interpret Patricia's poetry differently than I have done, and perhaps more accurately; especially those who are able to see her entire poetic work, which I do not expect to live long enough to see.  I admit that I will not have the final word, and that is cool; but I will have an early word.  One of Stevens' earliest commentators, Frank Doggett (with whom I was privileged to briefly correspond). is, perhaps, my first favorite of all those who offered early interpretations; and other, better informed, scholars have proven some of Doggett's assertions as incorrect or inaccurate.  But he was there before them; he was one of the earliest.  Patricia's poetry is so great that I know I cannot account for it all, and that my interpretations may be formally overturned by others.  That's just fine.  To alter one of Stevens' greatest lines, "Being there, in that time frame, is enough."