[Tim Murphy]

We're just going to have one thread, a sort of giant open mic where Spherians can post their favorite despairing poems, reflect on the canon, converse with one another. The discussion will be led by Jeff Holt, whom you can hear reading his work over at Distinguished Performances:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=10903

I'll be presenting three of Jeff's poems and sharing my thoughts on this very talented poet tomorrow. Josh Mehigan, originally scheduled for this event, can't participate, but Jeff will post his thoughts on his close friend. Rhina Espaillat and Suzanne Doyle have graciously agreed to participate. Tuesday morning I'm off to South Dakota, with no access to computers for a couple days. yr lariat, Tim

[Jeff Holt]

Greetings, all! This is just a quick note to thank Tim, Rhina and Suzanne for participating in this endeavor. Tim and I have been talking about doing something similar to this for months now. It's unfortunate that Josh can't participate, as he is one of the most formidable poets, and best friends, that I have ever had, but we had a great time together at West Chester. There was little despair at the conference; it was wonderful to participate in Rhina finally getting her due as the keynote speaker, and being the subject of an entire panel discussion.

But now, to the topic at hand: I am starting with a brief note here outlining my initial plan. Tomorrow, fairly early I hope--there are wife and children variables that are beyond my control--I will post an essay analyzing poems by 4 of my favorite poets of "quiet despair": Thomas Lovell Beddoes, James Thomson (B.V.), Weldon Kees, and Philip Larkin. In my opinion, only Larkin has gotten his fair share in the way of recognition by posterity. My purpose in bringing these 4 poets together is to demonstrate that poetry of despair, which is often read as poetry of isolation, may usefully be read as poetry of compassion. The poetry of despair, esp. the poetry of quiet, as opposed to hysterical, despair, is poetry that speaks truths that almost everyone feels at some point, but often fears to share. By reading poems that express similar, if often buried, sentiments, readers may find connections and realize that other people do, actually, share the same grief and terror, and may, hence, find some comfort in knowing that they are not alone.

That's all I have for now. I want to mention that I will also be commenting on some of Tim's poems from his misspent youth, and sharing some about my friendship with Josh. Furthermore, I will be encouraging everyone reading this to join in and share your own favorite poems of quiet despair, and your thoughts about these and anything else related to this.

May the cheerful celebration of gloom begin!

[Tim Murphy]

For those who weren't around when we did our big women poets symposium a couple years ago, Leslie Monsour hosted a fabulous thread to introduce all of us to Suzanne Doyle, who will co-host with Rhina, Jeff and me: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...=Suzanne+Doyle

[Jeff Holt]

Note: had originally planned to include Larkin in this essay, but will discuss him separately, later.

Reading the Poetry of Quiet Despair as a Poetry of Compassion

Throughout the accepted canon of poetry there are certain recurring themes that tend to draw interest and compassion from readers. For example, readers confronting Wilfrid Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” or Randell Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” may be moved to feel compassion for the suffering of individual victims of war, and, if they are veterans themselves, may be moved that someone else has written eloquently of something so similar to their own experiences. Similarly, a reader confronted with Theodore Roethke “My Poppa’s Waltz” might well feel compassion for the narrator and quite possibly identify with the child of the alcoholic father in the poem. And while such poems ring with grief, they also resound with protest, and it is the element of protesting a wrongdoing, specifically, that “things could be different IF,” that keeps such poetry from being entirely despairing. The protest at inhumane conditions suggests a hope that human beings might treat each other better, and this hope makes such poetry more universally attractive than the poetry of despair which offers no such hope.

I contend, however, that the three poems that I discuss in this essay, which I think of as poems of quiet despair, may also serve as vehicles of compassion. Such poems, perhaps even more than the poems previously mentioned, validate the “shadow” side of our feelings, the side that we fear to share with others for fear of alienation. Many of us, like Thomas Lovell Beddoes’ narrator in "The Brides’ Tragedy," have feared for our personal sanity at some point. Similarly, many of us, like James Thomson’s narrator in “The City of Dreadful Night,” have experienced a wrenching loss of faith in “God,” whether this was temporary or permanent. And it is difficult for this writer to imagine being a thoughtful reader in the 21st century without having, however briefly, experienced life as “absurd,” or empty and meaningless, especially in the grip of grief, as Weldon Kees’ narrator does in “Early Winter.”

That people experience these dreadful mental states is a given. The psychological question is, how comfortable do they feel about sharing them? Despite the parade of psychotropic medications across every tv screen, and the fact that it is now more or less understood, moreso than in previous decades, that it is “okay” to go to therapy, in my experience many, if not most, people still deeply fear sharing the feelings mentioned above due to a fear of alienation. And this is not simply an irrational fear. For example, although I am, professionally, a therapist, I work in corporate America. If I were to go into work tomorrow and begin freely expressing fears regarding any of the subjects mentioned above, I would expect to be looked upon with concern about whether or not I would be able to continue to function at my job. I am not critiquing that fact; that is simply the culture in which I live. But in such a culture, the poetry of quiet despair may be recognized as all the more vital in that such poetry offers affirmation to readers who may not find it anywhere else. If readers seek this poetry out, they may find connections and realize that other people do, in fact, share their grief and terrors, and may, hence, find some comfort in knowing, at least, that they are not alone. In providing such comfort, such poetry may serve a compassionate, connecting function for readers.

Perhaps no other poet of the Romantic Period speaks as directly to the shadow side of human nature as Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Much of Beddoes’ finest poetry may be found in his closet dramas, the first being "The Brides’ Tragedy." In this play, the protagonist, Hesperus, is terrified of going homicidally insane, a frequent motif in Beddoes’ work. In the following passage, Hesperus literally addresses his shadow as the evil part of himself that he fears:

[He turns, and addresses his shadow]
I know thee now,
I know the hideous laughter of thy face.
‘Tis Malice’ eldest imp, the heir of hell,
Red-handed Murther. Slow it whispers me,
Coaxingly with its serpent voice. Well sung,
Syrens of Acheron!
I’ll not look on thee;
Why does thy frantic weapon dig the air
With such frightful vehemence? Back, back,
Tell the dark grave I will not give it food.
(Act II, Scene IV, 55-63)

It is remarkable, on the one hand, that Beddoes wrote this in 1822, more than half a century before psychoanalysis came into prominence. What I find more remarkable, however, is the way that the poet draws out the readers’ identification with a character who is clearly wrestling with homicidal thoughts. By having Hesperus address his shadow as an “other,” and refer to it by numerous hideous names, such as “Malice,” “heir of hell,” and, most tellingly, “Red-handed Murther,” Beddoes positions Hesperus, for a moment, not as a potential murderer from whom to recoil, but rather as a man suffering from a terrible affliction.

And such he is. While there is certainly no time in this brief essay to present an entire argument that Hesperus is suffering from schizophrenia or an extreme dissociative disorder, there is ample evidence for this in the text. For example, immediately before the lines quoted above come the following lines:

[Grasps his dagger convulsively]
Who placed this iron aspic in my hand?
Speak! who is at my ear?
(Act III, Scene IV, 53-54)

This passage suggests that Hesperus is acting without knowing what he is doing, and also that he is hearing voices. Thus, a reader with an understanding of severe mental illness may see, in Hesperus, a character more to be pitied than feared, when he utters “Why does thy frantic weapon dig the air / With such frightful vehemence?” In another context, this might be comical, as it is Hesperus who is standing and stabbing the air with a dagger that he, himself, grasped, while he is addressing no one. But in the context of the fear of insanity, Hesperus may be fruitfully viewed with compassion, as he displays not only the characteristics of someone struggling with psychosis and/or dissociation, but also terror and the rejection of his condition. On the other hand, in terms of the compassion that this passage may offer readers, at the most basic level, any who have ever struggled with fears of insanity, or with thoughts that they felt were too disturbing to be their own, may find in this passage a mirror validating their struggles. More specifically, for readers who have ever struggled with psychotic or dissociative disorders, regardless of whether they involved homicidal urges, this passage could be a welcome reflection of what tend to otherwise be very isolating conditions.

James Thomson (B.V.), especially in his best known poem “The City of Dreadful Night,” writes in a tone of despair as intense, but more subdued, than Beddoes.’ Thomson, like Beddoes, was ahead of his time, in that, in 1874, he published his poem envisioning London as a wasteland. One of the strongest themes in Thomson’s poem is the loss of faith in God, and the psychological consequences of this. In the passage that follows, the narrator of the story is sitting with a congregation in the ruins of a church when a “shrill and lamentable cry” (6) pierces the air with the following:

The man speaks sooth, alas! The man speaks sooth:
We have no personal life beyond the grave;
There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:
Can I find here the comfort which I crave?
…….
My wine of life is poison mixed with gall,
My noonday passes in a nightmare dream,
I worse than lose the years which are my all:
What can console me for the loss supreme?

Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,
Speak not at all; can words make foul things fair?
Our life’s a cheat, our death a black abyss;
Hush and be mute envisaging despair.--
(XVI, 7-10, 35-42)

The first quatrain above reveals a man who is first admitting to his loss of faith, and who is at the same time realizing the implications of this and grasping at any sort of comfort that might steady him in a world that has suddenly begun spinning. The repetition of “The man speaks sooth,” combined with the exclaimed “alas!” show the man’s alarmed state of mind. He then lists the three truths that go together in his realization of his loss of faith: our personal life ends at death; there is no God; and fate is, to use Hardy’s phrase, “Hap,” or hapless, caring nothing for people. Looking at these three new truths, he asks if he can find any comfort here?

Twenty-five lines later we find the reply: nothing can console him for the “loss supreme,” and what should be his “wine of life” is “poison mixed with gall.” The man is so bitter at the loss of his faith, in fact, that he even curses words in his line “Speak not at all; can words make foul things fair?” and exhorts the congregation “Hush and be mute envisaging despair.” One might find it difficult to imagine readers finding compassion in this wrenching passage, and yet it is within the center of the hopelessness of it that compassion, or connection, lies for readers who have struggled terribly with faith and ultimately felt it slip away. It is to such readers that this poem is chiefly addressed, and for the very purpose outlined in this essay, offering solace as a fellow sufferer. As Thomson himself says in the intro to the poem:

"Yes, here and there some weary wanderer
In that same city of tremendous night,
Will understand the speech and feel a stir
Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight;
'I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother
Travels the same wild paths though out of sight.'”

Moving into the twentieth century, we find, in Weldon Kees’ “Early Winter,” a narrator whose world has been stripped of illusions of warmth and expected answers and been revealed, instead, as absurd, or empty and meaningless. The poem deserves quotation in its entirety:

Early Winter

Memory of summer is winter’s consciousness.
Sitting or walking or merely standing still,
Earning a living or watching the snow fall,
I am remembering the sun on sidewalks in a warmer place,
A small hotel and a dead girl’s face,
I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.

But the room is cold, the words in the books are cold,
And the question of whether we get what we ask for
Is absurd, unanswered by the sound of an unlatched door
Rattling in wind, or the sound of snow on roofs, or glare
Of the winter sun. What we have learned is not what we were told.
I watch the snow, feel for the heartbeat that is not there.

Kees sets the reader up to feel a sense of normality in lines 1-4, with lines simply describing the narrator’s actions and memories. But then, in lines 5 and 6, the absurd creeps into the simple memories:

A small hotel and a dead girl’s face,
I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.

What makes these lines particularly disturbing and absurd is that the narrator mentions “a dead girl’s face” as simply the last image that he remembers in a catalogue including “the sun on sidewalks in a warmer place” and “(a) small hotel,” then returns to his musings, stating “I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.”

This reader’s first thought is, what is wrong with the narrator? Why is he so disconnected to the dead girl whom he mentioned? The second stanza offers some clarification, but leaves much ambiguous. The narrator’s internal world, like the external world of snow, is “cold,” and he has found that “the question of whether we get what we ask for / Is absurd, unanswered” by the various sounds around him. Based on the numbness and questioning of the narrator, I am deducing that the narrator was with a girl, but somehow she died, and he is still alone and questioning why. Therefore, like so many people stricken with grief, the narrator feels numb and alone in an absurd world, his primary truth being the ominous “What we have learned is not what we were told.” Our last image of the narrator is of him watching the snow, feeling “for the heartbeat that is not there,” i.e. of the "dead girl.” It is not difficult to see how this poem, understood in this way, could be a poem of compassion for anyone suffering from grief over the death of a loved one. Suddenly, the old platitudes that others have offered ring hollow, and, in the face of a loved one’s tombstone, the question of whether we get what we ask for isn’t even a real question anymore, but a grim absurdity. While very little can be said to comfort people in such states, works of art that reveal to them someone else going through the same numbness and horror may provide them a sense of community, and perhaps a hope that others like them have persevered.

I have always found poetry of quiet despair to be compassionate and healing. I deliberately chose three poets in this essay whose work, while not entirely ignored, is certainly “off to the side” of the literary canon. My hope is that this essay may pique some readers’ interest in one or more of these poets and/or cause someone to think about these poems in a different way. Poetry, even at its most despairing, is still a reaching out to others, and poets of quiet despair offer aesthetic and emotional treasures that may include healing.

[Marybeth Rua-Larsen]

Hello Jeff,

I've been quite moved by the poems of yours that I've read here, and I've listened to, and been moved by, your podcast as well. I look forward to reading your essay above after "dance recital madness" with my daughters ends tomorrow evening. The essay looks very informative, and it's a subject I have quite a bit of interest in. I know you're just getting started, and I don't want to be rude, but I am dismayed that all the poets targeted for discussion are, unless my brief research is wrong (and I hope to be corrected if it is) white men -- Mehigan, Larkin, Kees, Beddoes and Thomson. No doubt they are wonderful and have much to offer on the subject, but surely there must be some women writers and/or writers from other cultures who show equal compassion in their writing of quiet desperation. I don't believe white men have cornered the market on that. I hope to hear about, or at the very least have named, some women writers and writers from various cultures, races and ethnicities who fit the subject being addressed. I realize it's a big world and we can't all be experts in every aspect of it, but I do hope we continue trying. Certainly that's information I'm interested to know, and I doubt I'm alone.

[Mary Meriam]

I think Charlotte Mew is a poet of quiet despair with compassion.

[RCL]

I'm reminded of Thoreau's poetic prose on this topic. I'm not sure, though, that it's compassionate:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Ralph

[A. E. Stallings]

Off the top of my head, I would agree that one is harder pressed to come up with (English-language) woman poets with such a bleakness of outlook as, say, Larkin or Hardy (that said, there are surprising poems of mirth and joy for those poets too--see Rachel Wetzsteon's recent piece on Larkin's joy in CPR). Sylvia Plath's despair is not quiet. Elizabeth Bishop's quiet is not desperate. Dorothy Parker might approach for bleakness, but the wit levens it.

Nonetheless, I can think of plenty of poems of quiet despair--the thread is titled "poems of" rather than poets--by women poets. This is surely one of the greatest, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

[Tim Murphy]

Dickenson is a genius at this sort of poem.

The bustle in the house
the morning after death
is solemnist of industries
enacted upon earth.

The sweeping up the heart
and putting love away
we shall not want to use again
until eternity.

Let me point out that in Suzanne Doyle and Rhina Espaillat, our co-hosts, we have two women leading the discussion who excel in looking firmly at our frayed condition with compassion. Thanks for that Browning poem, Alicia.

Here are my thoughts on a poem I fell in love with in childhood, now think is fundamentally wrong-headed, but still love.

Fern Hill

I suspect that the first time I heard Fern Hill I was seated beside my father, by a pond, waiting for sunset ducks. I was too young to carry a gun but big enough to put on waders and set forth decoys. There wasn’t a duck in sight, and my father said:


Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

I must have been about ten years old, and I was a small town boy. My father was the real deal, a farm boy, a superb reciter of poetry. The poem simply blew me apart, with its change of direction from recollection of happy youth to its grim reflection on the exigencies of age, which I was very far from! It is a poem to which I have returned for some decades.

I am now twenty years older than Thomas was the night he died of too many martinis, an undiagnosed diabetic, whom a heroic dose of insulin might have saved. What a loss. When I embarked on the path to poet at seventeen I was horribly derivative of Thomas. I’m over that, but I still recite that great singer with pleasure.

As I look back on my life at 59, I suspect that Thomas has it all wrong. Childhood for me was perplexity and unhappiness. Relatively late in life, at age 54, my life was taken over by the Holy Spirit, and I no longer “sing in my chains like the sea.” I have an image of Dylan Thomas, drunkenly sobbing on my living master’s couch shortly before he died: “I am washed up, still going on the inspiration I had at seventeen.”

Mr. Thomas, your poetry woke me from my sleep to a vast intoxication in our art. However derivative of you I might have been at seventeen, I never, ever drink martinis.

[Roger Slater]

I don't know, Tim. Sitting by the pond with your dad waiting for sunset ducks as dad recites glorious poetry seems like a pretty idyllic childhood scene worthy of Thomas or Wordsworth, but I catch your general point. Regardless of your personal experience, though, surely you can see that many children have access to a sort of pure joy and sense of wonder that adults so often lack.

I'm not sure where the line between poems of quiet despair, on the one hand, and noisier despair, on the other hand, is drawn. More than 90% of poems have some sort of unhappiness at their core, even if some of them manage to keep a stiff upper lip and find the silver lining. Almost no poems are thoroughly happy.

Jeff's point about compassion being at the heart of despairing poems is quite solid, though. The very act of writing a poem and putting it out there is somehow at odds with the idea that everything is meaningless, no genuine human connections are possible, we're all just passing shadows, etc.