V. 12th
The Layers
Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes
“The Red Hat”
Rachel Hadas
It started before Christmas. Now our son
officially walks to school alone.
Semi-alone, it’s accurate to say:
I or his father track him on the way.
He walks up on the east side of West End,
we walk on the west side. Glances can extend
(and do) across the street; not eye contact.
Already ties are feelings and not fact.
Straus Park is where these parallel paths part;
he goes alone from there. The watcher’s heart
stretches, elastic in its love and fear,
toward him as we see him disappear,
striding briskly. Where two weeks ago,
holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow,
he now is hustled forward by the pull
of something far more powerful than school.
The mornings we turn back to are no more
than forty minutes longer than before,
but they feel vastly different-flimsy, strange,
wavering in the eddies of this change,
empty, unanchored, perilously light
since the red hat vanished from our sight.
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April 21st, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Unfortunately I found this poem dull and unpleasant to read. I wasn’t moved by any of her imagery or metaphor, and the topic of overbearing mothers just tastes bitter and sour, there is nothing enjoyable about it. I simply saw a mother who mistakes her need for constant sontrol for a fierce, undying, and commendable love. Fretfullness is not a deep, intriguing emotion, it’s obnoxious, it’s a nuisance, and once again, there was no eye opening literary technique. It was faded color over an annoying whine. When her son gets kidnapped an murdered on his lonely walk to school and his mother sits wailing at grave before its time, bleeding her agony through the spine of her quill, there’s a tear-drenched piece of parchment I want to take a look at. This is backhanded feel good, neo-consensus, soccer mom crap, and I’m sincerely grateful for a curriculum full of James Joyce and T.S. Elliot.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Rachel Hadas’s “The Red Hat” makes me think about growing up. I like her use of alliteration (“parallel paths part”). The poem reminds me of a book we read sophomore year, The Catcher in the Rye. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s red hunting hat proves to be symbolic, just as the red hat is symbolic in Hadas’s poem.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I didn’t really take as much from this poem as much as I have from the others we have read this year. It’s kind of boring although the topic is very depressing and moving. It was okay to read but nothing really special. The topic of overbearing parents is a little worn out and tired in this modern times and is nothing new. It also makes one wonder why if the parents would follow their son, why not follow him the entire way? That would have been the only way to prevent his abduction. The writing style to me is plain but the alliteration of “parallel paths part” is nice.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
In all, I did not really enjoy this poem. Its subject was very moving yet it made you feel saddened and depressed. The diction used was very good, since the poem’s tone was carried through the entire poem and the reader was able to clearly picture the scenario and feelings between the parents and their son. The poem’s subject was not all that capturing, but I feel like if one were to look deeper into the poem and see the greater picture than what is stated, you could take a lot out of it. The way the poem was written did not allow the story to flow nicely and it was written more like a novel than a poem, starting the poem with, “It started before Christmas” and then continuing the story in this manner and sentence style.