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05-27-2011, 08:06 PM
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French Forms #3--Harry
For Harry, Who Had Three Passports
I knew a man, who had a man, who knew
a man inside the Ministry. He said
his man was just the man to see you through
whatever difficulties might ensue
in sorting out the living from the dead.
I knew a man who knew a man. Who knew,
back then, what Harry really knew, or who
he’d ever helped, or who got shot instead?
He was the kind of man who’d see you through
his pale blue eyes, and sense at once what you
most feared - and what you’d pay to ease your dread -
to meet a man who knew the man who knew.
I’m just a businessman, he’d say, a Jew
without a tribe – and raise his gleaming head –
but you can trust my man to see you through.
When others raged, he quietly withdrew,
and we all left, but Harry never fled:
he knew a man, who knew a man, who knew
the man who was the man to see you through.
Bruce Bennett:
I was drawn to “For Harry, Who Had Three Passports” because of the way it teasingly teeters on the verge of narrative. In The Making Of A Poem, in their Introduction to the villanelle, editors Strand and Boland make the following claim: “Perhaps the single feature of the villanelle that twentieth-century poets most made their own is the absence of narrative possibility…. the form refuses to tell a story.” What poet is going to turn down a challenge like that? The author of this villanelle, whether intentionally or not, seems to have picked up the gauntlet.
The title conveys vital information, identifying the protagonist and establishing him as a personage of means and wiles. We wonder, who is Harry, and why does he have, and need, three passports? The first line and a half raises the ante with its confiding noir quality; we don’t know who this “I” is, nor why he is telling us what he is telling us, nor why there is any need for such connections. Without knowing anything definite, we are already implicated in some sort of disturbing web.
The intrigue immediately deepens. The “man inside the Ministry” – “man” is repeated five times in the opening stanza – can somehow help in the business of “sorting out the living from the dead.” What is one to make of this? It still tells us nothing we can make usable sense of, so we are more mystified than ever.
The variation in line six, which turns the final words into a question, subtly advances the inscrutable plot-line, with Harry himself making an appearance in line seven, but he is more a man of mystery than ever. Even “back then” one didn’t know what Harry “really knew,” or whether he could in fact do anything for anyone, or whether he could even be trusted. Clearly a slippery fellow, an intimation confirmed by the description of him (those “pale blue eyes”) as someone able to easily size you up and coldly play on your insecurities and vulnerability. And yet, he was only the gatekeeper, the one who could, if he chose and if you paid enough, make it possible for you to “meet a man who knew the man who knew.”
I’m a little troubled by the quote, “a Jew/without a tribe,” because that doesn’t seem like something someone would actually say, and I have to be suspicious that “Jew” came in because it’s the rhyme word, though I suppose one could make the case that it’s just one more fact that leaves us hanging in this milieu. By now, Harry’s use of the word “trust” in the final line of stanza five rings convincingly hollow.
And then, when things seem at last to have come to some sort of head and drastic action is called for, he remains the enigma he always was, keeping his own counsel. No one now knows what ultimately happened to him, but he appears to have relied on the connections he claimed to have had.
And that’s it. The poem is over. The final curtain has come down.
So, has the challenge been met? Did this villanelle tell a story, or not? Nineteen lines, with all those repetitions and variations on repetition. We hardly know much more about the speaker, Harry, the men Harry knew, and those dangerous corridors of power and conspiracy they all inhabited than we did when we started out. But we have been given a world.
Last edited by Susan McLean; 05-28-2011 at 08:26 AM.
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05-28-2011, 08:34 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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This is the first one to strike me as absolutely terrific, particularly in its ingenious usage of repetends with varying punctuation and varying position and function within the structure of the poem's skillful sentences. And I have a hunch it was written not far from Newburyport.
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05-28-2011, 09:09 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Massachusetts, USA
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I like this a lot--catchy, convincing, and well-crafted. I share Bruce's reservation about S5; I wonder if it might be more effective if it included another one of those random zingers like "who got shot instead," i.e., another tantalizing glimpse of the serious trouble this mysterious guy was in on.
Best,
Jean
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05-28-2011, 09:14 AM
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If this is indeed by the man from Newburyport, then it's one of the best of his I've read. Terrific. I believe that oo-rhymes work wonders in French forms.
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05-28-2011, 09:22 AM
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Location: Savannah, GA 31405
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Ingenious! The writer constructed repetends that bear within their syntax a multiplicity of semantic directions, thus insuring that the flow would seem inevitable.
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05-28-2011, 10:48 AM
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The first repetend is fun and all, but it is a rough mouthful for me at the start of a poem. I don't know. I see the cleverness of the repetends -- how they lend themselves to repetition in altered contexts and all. But it seems clever for me, almost gimmicky. I guess most repeating form poems seem that way to me, and I am hoping to become a better reader of them through this event.
David R.
Last edited by David Rosenthal; 05-28-2011 at 02:08 PM.
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05-28-2011, 10:51 AM
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I remember this one. No nits then, no nits now. An incisive and witty exposé of a "hidden" world.
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05-28-2011, 11:22 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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The author is a blatant show-off who knows inside out what he's doing. I love it. The poem doesn't amount to much, except that it is an absolute clinic on the villanelle.
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05-28-2011, 12:32 PM
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Location: United Kingdom
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This is everything you want. The form and the content are indivisible. I cant see anything wrong with the jew bit. I think a man could easly say such a thing.
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05-28-2011, 01:35 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Connecticut, USA
Posts: 7,563
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I had not encountered this one before, and I love it. It was obvious to me right away who the poet is. An outstanding example of this intricate form and a very enjoyable piece.
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