Haines

MacArthur · #1 01-28-2002, 11:54 AM

The Wolves

Last night I heard the wolves howling,
their voices coming from afar
over the wind polished ice— so much
brave solitude in that sound.

They are death’s snow-bound sailors;
they know only a continual
drifting between moon-lit islands,
their tongues licking the stars.

But they sing as good seamen should
and tomorrow the sun will find them
yawning and blinking
the snow from their eyelashes.

Their voices rang through the frozen
waters of any human sleep,
blown through the night wind
with the moon for an icy sail.

John Haines

When I show this poem to most ordinary acquaintances it is well-received at once…even by those who winced at the prospect of perusing a poem. Show it to a consciously “literary" acquaintance however, and it’s apt to get faint praise, at best. No way this would endure an MFA critique group!

It is a good measure of how far contemporary literary standards have not only drifted from any genuine audience taste...but lost hold on common sense. There can’t be anything wrong with this poem…if you like poetry, you should like this. If you are indifferent, your principal interest isn't in poetry.

The piece above employs a rhythmic yet flexible cadence, meets all the standards of well-written prose, creates lovely and apt imagery, addresses an inherantly interesting topic, and makes an accessible and universal statement. It’s about as original as any individual poem could be, in the sense of being unlike any other single piece. If it can be assilimated to some other poems you may admire...that’s a good thing!

It lacks any of the features that validate poems in the contemporary academic culture, though. It isn’t authenticated via some narrow and bigoted identity (Black, Gay, Woman. non-Western etc.), it doesn’t self-consciously refer to any other “text”, it doesn’t introduce the author as an MFA— about the only thing you can assume about the speaker is that he sleeps somewhere it’s possible to hear wolves, and this doesn’t command your attention— and the craftsman doesn’t choose to display a spurious “technique” by deploying screw-ball line-breaks.

There is little here to employ the Poetics/Lit.Theory industry...thank God!

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited February 15, 2002).]

wordpress · #2 02-15-2002, 08:21 PM

Agreed...it's a stunning poem. Utterly clear yet deeply mysterious at the same time. Haines is a magnficent poet.

He hasn't had an easy time being received by the MFA crowd, although that did change for awhile in the early/mid 90s when his collected poems appeared. But his strengths as a poet are not replicable in an MFA program. Clarity of vision honed by long experience, a sure ear refined by decades of practice, and an authentic experience in the world beyond identity politics...two years in po-camp can't give you this.

I have a Ph.D. in creative writing, but it wasn't until after I left that I began writing well...in large part, I think, because I was no longer writing poems on deadline.
I always got dinged by my instructors because my poems weren't sufficiently "polished." Haines was the only instructor I ever had who understood, or acknowledged, the limits of workshops. And, even more than his instruction, I took guidance from the example of his life and work.

So, thanks for bringing up this poem. Very refreshing for me.

Curtis Gale Weeks · #3 02-16-2002, 06:45 PM

I don't much like this poem: Probably, this has much to do with personal predisposition, what I tend to like and dislike reading, more than any kind of objective apprehension. The metaphor of wolves/sailors seems to be too much of a stretch, not well drawn but instead declared by a speaker who is lost in whimsy--I had thought I might point out the specific lines where this occurs, but it occurs in most every line; so I'll point out the lines where it isn't overt:

Last night I heard the wolves howling,
their voices coming from afar
over the wind polished ice...

This is the only literal observation made by the speaker. Everywhere else, the personification is so thick, I can hardly believe the voice.

Certainly, this is tell, not show, which I suppose is a very MFA kind of critique; but I've no MFA nor have I attended workshops, etc. I simply don't like lines which display a speaker more aware of his own fanciful rhetoric than of any importance discerned beyond that rhetoric.--I suppose, this is another instance of what you would call having "lost hold on common sense."

I'm not wanting to be critical of your appreciation of this poem, however. I've attempted to appreciate the laid-back "ah...!" of dreaming beauty, but such beauty never stayed with me. (Well, to be honest: BANNED POSTof course it's stayed with me, generally, in the background; but I'm more likely to view wolves as having ticks and fleas, being killed by humans for sport--being unable to breed and hunt uninhibited, prosper, because of ranchers--than as being at one with the wild. They're fighting against the wild as we are, in their own way of surviving.)

Telling hyperbole such as "their tongues licking the stars" bothers me as well; the speaker's wanting to make them mythological, here, by exaggerating the reality of the setting.

It is a good measure of how far contemporary literary standards have not only drifted from any genuine audience taste...but lost hold on common sense. There can’t be anything wrong with this poem…if you like poetry, you should like this. If you are indifferent, your principal interest isn't in poetry.

I can't reconcile this with "Poetry," capital "P." Poetry's been used for many purposes, from Muhammad Ali's posturing to Hallmark greetings, from the Psalms to...etc., of course. My personal interest happens to be in poetry--and other communicative media--which contains intelligent, possibly witty, certainly insightful tropes and arguments rather than in poetry which draws fanciful pictures. Complex poetry is beautiful, from my vantage point; but by "complex," I don't mean "unintelligible." Haines' poem tells more about its speaker than about wolves or me. I've met several people who loved Native American themes, hung paintings of wolves on their living room walls, and others whose conceptualization of "wolf" comes from The Belgariad, etc., and no doubt Haines' poem would be lovely for those who view wolves in that "common sense" of being mysterious and archetypical. I don't know that they have a truer appreciation of "Poetry" than mine is, however, although I also wouldn't say that mine is any better than theirs.

Last night I heard the wolves howling, their voices coming from afar over the wind polished ice—so much brave solitude in that sound. They are death’s snow-bound sailors; they know only a continual drifting between moon-lit islands, their tongues licking the stars. But they sing as good seamen should and tomorrow the sun will find them yawning and blinking the snow from their eyelashes....

Indeed, this "meets all the standards of well-written prose." I'm not going to say that it's prose rather than poetry, but I've read lines such as these in fantasy novels many times. It paints a pretty picture, is amusing; and I supposing being "a-musing" is one quality of good poetry. If this passage appeared in a fantasy novel, however, where the plot involved mythical or magical wolves or this particular arctic setting, it'd be better than what it is.

I agree that "narrow and bigoted identity" isn't enough to qualify a piece of writing as "poetry;" I'm very much with Bloom on this one.

I don't know that Haines often used "screw-ball line-breaks," but there's this poem at AAP, written by him, that uses them: Haines. --whatever its name. (The AAP screwed up the title, listing two.)

I'm not sure that he avoided the "Poetics/Lit.Theory" methods, whatever they are. Here are a few excerpts from one of his books: from Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems.--Here are such sensationalistic images as:

I believe in this stalled magnificence,
this churning chaos of traffic,
a beast with broken spine,
its hoarse voice hooded in feathers
and mist; the baffled eyes
wink amber and slowly darken. (from "The Snowbound City")

Actually, I kinda like "The Snowbound City;" but I've always considered the grasping/grappling with complex imagery for imagery's sake to be sensationalistic in nature and absolutely required by the MFA/journals approach to poetry. How can traffic have a voice--or, anything, for that matter--which is "hooded in feathers and mist?" Of course he's drawing the picture of an owl, but even the owl's "voice" isn't so hooded; maybe the owl's head/eyes are so hooded. I think maybe with this poem ("The Snowbound City"), he's accomplished a dreadful scene by it, a thrilling dread throughout that poem, but I have to force myself through the thickness and consider the speaker as being one who cannot approach reality without first cloaking it w/ mythoi and feathers.

Curtis.

[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited February 16, 2002).]

MacArthur · #4 02-21-2002, 01:40 PM

Haven't been here for weeks. Delighted to see the thread/forum come alive.
Curtis...I'm not mad or anything, but your comments don't make any sense. To describe this as a telling-poem seems little short of incredible...what wouldn't be telling, then? To describe wolves as having fleas? How can the poem simultaneously be "telling" and guilty of a far-fetched stretch for imagery?

"the sun will find them yawning and blinking the snow from their eye-lashes" is about as vivid and concrete as anything writing can supply. And to describe a howling wolf on a star-lit night as "licking the stars" is close to literal observation. This masterpiece lacks nothing in terms of immediacy and aptness.

What could be inappropriate about a poet expressing admiration for the "courage" of complex and fairly intellegent predators in a marginal habitat? This comes close to the heart of what poems (as a serious form of Art, not verse) do. If you are too jaded to find this moving, it's time to put the books away (as I did once) and not read for about five years. Then you discover that these are the poems that matter...not the clever crap.

They're also the poems that are hard to write. If you think it's easy...

Curtis Gale Weeks · #5 02-21-2002, 03:53 PM

Quote:

The Wolves

Last night I heard the wolves howling,
their voices coming from afar
over the wind polished ice— so much
brave solitude in that sound.

They are death’s snow-bound sailors;
they know only a continual
drifting between moon-lit islands,
their tongues licking the stars.

But they sing as good seamen should
and tomorrow the sun will find them
yawning and blinking
the snow from their eyelashes.

Their voices rang through the frozen
waters of any human sleep,
blown through the night wind
with the moon for an icy sail.

John Haines

____________

I'll try to make sense of my words, then.

First, the poem opens with the phrase, "Last night I heard the wolves howling...." The poem ends with "Their voices rang through...." These statements describe a speaker who has heard the wolves. The only way we might guess that the speaker has any actual knowledge of wolves is by paying attention to the body of the poem; the statements between these parenthetical phrases are all we have.

Let's parse through those statements:

[*]They are death's snow-bound sailors. --What does this mean? They are creatures who sail death as sailors might sail seas? Or they are creatures of death, sailing at death's bidding? Either way, I question how wolves can have any special relationship to "death," beyond the relationships other living things might have with "death." The word "death" is used hyperbolically here, and is quite meaningless. Perhaps Haines wanted to play off the "common sense" fear, dread, and unknowability of "death" to make his wolves seem partisan to whatever this particular "death" is, to share in its attributes. He's telling us that the wolves have this special relationship without significantly showing us what this relationship is and why it's important.
[*]they know only a continual/drifting between moon-lit islands --We're being told that they "know" this, that this is the only thing they "know." I question how any human can know what wolves "know." Here, Haines is inserting his own opinion, quite anthropomorphically, to create hyperbole which tells us that this is how the wolves perceive the world. Do wolves only "drift?" I can't answer the question of what wolves "know," if they know anything, but seeing a wolf in action taking down its prey doesn't give me the feeling that wolves "only...drift..."
[*]their tongues licking the stars --Actually, if they "know only a continual drifting," are they always howling? Already, Haines' limited perception is showing through (if it wasn't already, that is....) I suppose I could make the imaginative leap and say that the stars' light might often be reflected in the snow/ice, or throughout the night, and the wolves are thusly "licking" it--No, actually, I can't. This hyperbolic phrase is meaningless. Sure, it sounds pretty, and golly, wouldn't it be nice to imagine that the wolves have this special relationship to the stars? But Haines has told us that they have this special relationship to stars, via their tongues...even though the relationship must be by accident, because the wolves only know drifting. They don't know that they are "licking the stars." Pity.
[*]But they sing as good seamen should --Ah, wolves "sing." Well, we humans sing, so this howling is definitely a "singing," by our ears, right? Why they would be singing without ever being able to know that they are singing mystifies me. (Remember, they only know continual drifting.) Seriously, I'm not all that mystified. Again, Haines is telling us that this howling is "singing" by his standards--perhaps, by "human standards"--but it's not "singing" by my standards. If they "knew" they were "singing," possibly I'd be tempted to believe him, but only if he expressed this possibility as a guess: He's no wolf. Of course, all good seamen should sing: This is so freighted by opinion that it cannot be viewed as an objective reality....Here, Haines is telling us that all good seamen should sing. Personally, I believe that all people should sing, seaman or not, but that's only my opinion.
[*]and tomorrow the sun will find them --Not only is "death" a being; the wolves, human; but the sun is a cognizant creature also very much like a human. It'll "find" them. Imaginative leap, you say? Or is Haines telling us that the sun is indeed such a being, capable of "finding?" Has Haines shown this reality, in any case?
[*]yawning and blinking/the snow from their eyelashes. --Well, waking humans yawn and blink the "snow" from their eyelashes, so wolves must always do this too, right? I'll give you this: I can see how wolves might indeed do these things, quite literally, but with the heavy personification of death/sun/wolves leading up to this, this becomes an overt personification itself. Also, Haines has told us that the wolves will be doing this, rather than having shown us the actual occurrence.
[*]Their voices rang --Wolves have voices? He's telling us again, that they do.
[*]through the frozen/waters of any human sleep --It's the "any" of this line that bothers me more than anything else in the poem, which you must know, by now, is saying a lot. Not only has Haines been telling me these grand personifications are actualities, but now he's telling me with that word that his subjective reality (the experience of hearing those howls) is my own. Sure, if I were generous (and numb to the world), I might say that Haines is talking about the howls ringing through the night even while all humans are asleep. But I'm not. What he means by "the frozen waters" is up for debate, because it's meaningless until we place our own meaning on it.
[*]blown through the night --I can accept this phrase as being actual; indeed, vibrations are carried by the wind, so their howls (not "voices") are certainly being blown...
[*]with the moon for an icy sail. --but the moon is not channeling this blowing. It's a pretty picture, sure, but meaningless. Perhaps the wolves are "sailors," their "moon-lit islands" are the boat, and the moon is the sail. Again, this is a pretty picture, but how in the world can a moon be compared to a sail? Before you answer: yes, perhaps the wolves, in howling at the moon (if this is indeed the actual thing at which they are howling), are using the moon as a sail...as a focus for their howling much like the wind is "focused" by a sail to cause movement. But Haines has already said that the howls are being blown through the night wind, not that the howls are doing the blowing. The moon is a "guide" for the howls, the wind?--A guide for the howls, maybe, but not for the wind. I shouldn't question this relationship, I suppose; I should just accept Haines' telling. Maybe I would, if he had "told" it better.

I haven't said anything about the "brave solitude," the " 'courage' of complex and fairly intellegent [sic] predators in a marginal habitat," as you put it--but I hope you'll know by now how I feel about such anthropocentrism disguised as fact.

I find your closing directive to be insulting, or would if I chose to heed your suggestions to "put the books away...and not read for about five years."--This smacks of the same attitude in Haines' poem, that these howlings ring through "any" human sleep, including mine. They don't, not as he's drawn them...Certainly, you're allowed your own opinion that "If you like poetry, you should like this. If you are indifferent, your principal interest isn't in poety." But I can't be cornered thusly; and I doubt that the reality of any wolf can be cornered as per Haines' attempt.

The issues that you are raising are important; but I'll ask you this: the singer Jewel reaches--touches--more humans than the poems of ________ (fill in the blank with any non-pop/hallmark poet); should we therefore start mimicking her songs/poetry? Is whimsy to be the hallmark of "poems...a serious form of Art?"

Curtis.

[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited February 21, 2002).]

MacArthur · #6 02-21-2002, 04:56 PM

Well, yes of course...every line in Haine's poem tells us...what it tells us. A line of poetry is always a telling, in that tautological sense. Give me an example of a line of poetry that doesn't tell.
To make comparisons between unlike things is...imagery. Haines could have couched his comparisons expressly as such with words "like" and "as"-- but this would neither be concise nor effective, and scarce worth the bother to avoid offending an audience (for poetry?) with extreme literalist scruples. Isn't it easier to say the moon is a sail, rather than like one? Even a child couldn't be mislead.

You misunderstood the licking imagery. In profile, a wolf's toungue would appear to touch stars, the same way your extended hand could "cover" the moon.

I really don't get your problem with Haine's employment of symbolic and fancied connections between large dimensions of existence (eg. Death, courage) and concrete observations. This is the region of the imagination poetry inhabits. You even seem to back-handedly concede his success-- all the pictures are lovely. Yes...and what else were they supposed to be?

I'm sorry if you are taking offense, but your philistinism is striking. You sound like a pious Moslem abjuring idolatry. Well, poetry is idolotrous-- otherwise, what's it for? There is no advantage, really, to formatting non-fiction prose with line-breaks.

(BTW-- If Haines had said "I know only a few good places to eat in Portland", would you take this to describe the entire contents of his mental life?
If I can't imagine how wolves might feel, how could I imagine how you might feel?
All literary statements are, by convention, fictional and contrary-to-fact. In Symbolist aesthetics the terms are ill-defined, and in Surrealism, deliberately paradoxical-- but all literary statements are fictional, even in the most "realist" aesthetic. The strategy of Naturalism is to confine itself to statements we might find plausible...but that's a dull and unsatisfying aesthetic, indeed.)

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited February 21, 2002).]

Curtis Gale Weeks · #7 02-21-2002, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MacArthur:
Well, yes of course...every line in Haine's poem tells us...what it tells us. A line of poetry is always a telling, in that tautological sense. Give me an example of a line of poetry that doesn't tell.

Words tell, yes: I'll agree with this broad statement. So, all lines of poetry also tell. What is telling in this poem--IMO, of course--is the hyperbole and point-blank comparisons without substantiation. Most poems do this sort of thing in one way or another, compare big & small, join apparently dissimilar things; but my favorite poems do so without so loudly demanding my quite conscious decision to give in to the joinings. I view this particular Haines poem as an expression of opinion, Haines' opinion/perspective, because he's not shown many of the things he's declaring to be actual--i.e., he's not drawn enough corroboration between the joined items. He's allowed his opinions--indeed, stripping him of these opinions might be difficult--and anyone else who happens to already hold the same opinions will no doubt love to hear them reiterated back to himself. It's reinforcement without the enforcement. Nothing in Haines' poem entices me to come over for an extended stay.

Quote:

To make comparisons between unlike things is...imagery. Haines could have couched his comparisons expressly as such with words "like" and "as"-- but this would neither be concise nor effective, and scarce worth the bother to avoid offending an audience (for poetry?) with extreme literalist scruples. Isn't it easier to say the moon is a sail, rather than like one? Even a child couldn't be mislead.

Imagery is imagery. It's the representation of the actual by words, IMO. This representation might be used for comparison of things or for contrast, or merely to represent one individual thing. (You might consider "red rose" to be a comparison of the quality "red" with the different material item of "rose," as a comparison "between unlike things." I'd agree. But I think you meant something different in your definition of "imagery.")

Quote:

You misunderstood the licking imagery. In profile, a wolf's toungue would appear to touch stars, the same way your extended hand could "cover" the moon.

Perhaps I did; but I don't think so. The speaker's not viewing the wolves, but hearing them. Maybe the speaker's viewed them in the past and is now recalling the image, but nowhere in this poem is this reality expressed. If the poem had been one of an actual observer of the wolves, looking at them from the proper perspective, the phrase would have been meaningful. As it stands, the phrase requires something outside the poem in order to have meaning--namely, a reader's willingness to create meaning where no meaning exists.

Quote:

I really don't get your problem with Haine's employment of symbolic and fancied connections between large dimensions of existence (eg. Death, courage) and concrete observations. This is the region of the imagination poetry inhabits. You even seem to back-handedly concede his success-- all the pictures are lovely. Yes...and what else were they supposed to be?

IMO, nature is more lovely in its complexity and breadth than mere words on a page. If I want "lovely" I can look out my window. Or at my desk. Or at the ceiling. --and still find more beauty than words can express. If a poem wants to be as lovely as nature, it ought to express that nature as accurately as possible, whatever bit of nature it addresses. Haines has some lovely phrases, but the poem as a whole is pointing my attention toward him, toward the poet's fancy, and away from wolves, IMO.

Quote:

I'm sorry if you are taking offense, but your philistinism is striking. You sound like a pious Moslem abjuring idololatry. Well, poetry is idolotrous-- otherwise, what's it for? There is no advantage, really, to formatting non-fiction prose with line-breaks.

Well, if this isn't religious slander, how should I take your assessment of my words? Maybe I'm a pious Christian, spewing my filth, or a pious Jew?

Review your own opening statements, your willingness to define "Poetry" for others. I certainly don't need to idolize your idols to understand or appreciate poetry. You posted a poem which you admire, stated the fact that no serious poet could dislike this poem, and when you get a reply which doesn't exactly mirror your own idolatry, you don't know how to respond without hurling insults.

I responded to your original posting by posting my opinion, prefacing my words with this line: "I don't much like this poem: Probably, this has much to do with personal predisposition, what I tend to like and dislike reading, more than any kind of objective apprehension. " I can accept the fact that others might like this poem for its fancy, its method of drawing pretty pictures; but I by no means feel obligated to like it, to join the "common sense" readers, merely because that's the only thing you can accept as being "serious about poetry."

Curtis.

MacArthur · #8 02-22-2002, 01:39 AM

Perhaps it would be illuminating to have you supply some examples. Which poems are excellent, where the Haine's poem is deficient?...in, say, 16-20 lines? Matters of aesthetic judgment can only be advanced by comparison, where it's reasonable to make comparisons.