[Tim Murphy]

Had a pm from John Beaton, who was thinking about Wilbur's desideratum, "accurate words." He had just watched his mother-in-law "calling" the Scottish country dances on Burns Night, and he confessed "she has a certain god-like authority about her."

[Golias]

In Mayflies the caller seems to be the One who calls His creatures to their roles or vocations -- as in a call to the ministry or priesthood: "Many are called, but few are chosen," which is one argument for "How fair the choices of the caller are."

W/G

[Wild Bill]

I suppose "fiat" has an equally pesky connotation for paper money, but the meaning in context is immediate and unmistakeable. I think it's a wonderfully nuanced line.

------------------
Bill

[A. E. Stallings]

Increasingly, I feel that diction IS poetry. For me, quadrillions and fiats MAKE the poem. And boy does he have a way with phrases ("dancers of a day"--for the mayflies are indeed ephemerae). He's a poet of supreme felicity.

Indeed, I think one of the dangers that CAN be inherent in a workshop atmosphere is the tall poppy syndrome--that anything out of the usual, that calls attention to itself, will be singled out for comment. It takes a strong will to stand by an unpopular choice. Of course, it may be good to be challenged on such choices, but I do wonder... Sometimes too much second-guessing is not a good thing. We also have to learn to trust our intuitions.

I love how "fair" is both "beautiful" and "just" in this line.

I also love the supple metrical pattern here, 5's interspersed with 3s and 2s, which suggests the back and forward movements of a round-dance. The indentations for the short lines also result in the visual evocation of the dancing column of mayflies in their mathematical and balletic motions.

It also reminds me a bit of Lucretius (well, what doesn't these days, I hear someone say...) as he looks at the motes in a beam of light and has intimations of atoms and the workings of the ordered universe.

Wilbur is one of my two absolutely favorite living poets, both masters of diction. For me, Wilbur represents the more Norman inheritance of English, and Heaney (my other favorite) the more Anglo-Saxon. (Not to say either is exclusively one or the other--am talking of emphasis.) They represent almost opposite lexical textures--but perhaps that is why I value them both so.

[Len Krisak]

There. Alicia, as usual, said it better
than I could. I applaud her great good sense
(shown in agreeing with me).

On the indentions of the poem,
Wilbur has always, as far back as I can
remember, indented his nonce stanzas
(and "Mayflies" uses a true stanza, a
repeated, exact pattern) to show his
meter. In that sense, the 2s and 3s here
are not sprinkled through the poem, but are
quite regular in their pattern. I think
Hardy and Herbert tend to do the same, though
I'm sure there must be instances where they
don't follow the practice precisely.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

As for "fiats," that perfect word, being reminiscent of the car, if that's a problem I say change the name of the car. What its use in this poem does is to return to the word its original majesty, washing it clean of gas and oil. And isn't that one of the tasks of poetry, to return language to what it was--or could be? But only very great poems can do that, like this one.

[Richard Wakefield]

I like this poem so much that I wouldn't have thought my liking could increase, but this discussion, and especially Alicia's and Rhina's comments, have made me like and appreciate it all the more. I'm always fascinated when what I take to be the solitary pleasures of poetry are enhanced by community. Well, language IS communal, a resource that lies incomplete in any individual -- although Wilbur makes me wonder if there isn't here and there an individual who does indeed possess it complete.
Richard

[A. E. Stallings]

Sorry, Len--didn't mean to suggest that the 3's and 2's weren't in a pattern.

I am very enamoured of the effect of short lines in IP--for instance in Larkin, who often uses 3's (a standard ip variation we see in Dryden & Milton, for instance, but which seems rare for contemporary practitioners).

Rhina is absolutely right (per usual!)--surely one of the poet's jobs is to rid words of their stifling accretions and return them to their radical (root) sense, so that they can be vigorous again.

[Robert J. Clawson]

[quote]Originally posted by Len Krisak:

[b]"Quadrillions" was chosen not simply for
its suggestion of innumerable mayflies,
but for its echo of "quadrille." The poem
is built around dance metaphors.


Thanks, Len. I find this instructive. It's echo could also include "cotillion."

[A. E. Stallings]

Was just reading an essay by Frank Kearful on Wilbur & Hecht in the latest Leviathan Quarterly (in which OUR Terese has a Ronsard translation), and it discusses this poem a bit:

Wilbur has always been a tactfully resonant poet, and incidental echoes of Wordsworth (rhyming with cloud, a crowd of stars rather than a crowd of daffodils appears), of Bishop (whose fireflies "begin to rise" in 'A Cold Spring'), and of James Merrill's tones and manner (not only when the fluttering insects begin their entrechats) add to one's pleasure in reading 'Mayflies'. The poem most immediately brought to mind, however, is Lowell's 'Mr. Edwards and the Spider', to which Mr. Wilbur's mayflies perform a reply.

I thought that was all quite interesting, and mostly apt, although it strikes me that the "crowd of stars" most immediately echoes Yeats--the close of "When You Are Old" (speaking of Ronsard!)--"And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."