[R. S. Gwynn]

BUTCHERING

My mother's mother, toughened by the farm,
hardened by infants' burials, used a knife
and swung an axe as if her woman's arm
wielded a man's hard will. Inured to life
and death alike, "What ails you now?" she'd say
ungently to the sick. She fed them too,
roughly but well, and took the blood away--
and washed the dead, if there was that to do.
She told us children how the cows could sense
when their own calves were marked for butchering,
and how they lowed, their wordless eloquence
impossible to still with anything--
sweet clover, or her unremitting care.
She told it simply, but she faltered there.


Well, I have no major complaints with this one at all. My only quibbles might be with "Inured" and "faltered"--not for any particular reason except that something better might show up eventually. Maybe "blood" could be replaced with "pans" or something a little less specific. Otherwise, it's quite good, and line 8 is one of those masterstrokes of simplicity that works perfectly, especially in the last line of the octave.

[Janet Kenny]

I'm going insane. I loved this the first time I read it and I'm mortified to insult the poet by not remembering who wrote it.

It's "earthed"--well and truly and it has poignancy and courage. A beautiful sonnet. I'll have to like another one an awful lot if this is not to remain my favourite.
Janet


BUTCHERING

My mother's mother, toughened by the farm,
hardened by infants' burials, used a knife
and swung an axe as if her woman's arm
wielded a man's hard will. Inured to life
and death alike, "What ails you now?" she'd say
ungently to the sick. She fed them too,
roughly but well, and took the blood away--
and washed the dead, if there was that to do.
She told us children how the cows could sense
when their own calves were marked for butchering,
and how they lowed, their wordless eloquence
impossible to still with anything--
sweet clover, or her unremitting care.
She told it simply, but she faltered there.

[grasshopper]

I think this is beautifully written, but the description of the 'toughening' in the sonnet made it hard for me to accept the faltering at the end. I think I would expect the woman decribed here to be quite matter of fact about it.
Apart from that, I found it excellent.
Regards, Maz

[Carol Taylor]

I'm guessing Rhina for this one.

Carol

[David Anthony]

Yes, I think it's Rhina.
Lovely poem.

[Richard Wakefield]

Having stood apart from these deliberations, I hope I haven't forfeited my right to vote. If not, then for reasons too many to list I cast my ballot for "Butchering."
RPW

[epigone]

I can only add my voice to the cheers. I note Maz's complaint. The thought occurred to me as well. But I read the ending as suggesting that this is a portrait of a woman who is not unfeeling but who has become expert at masking her feelings well. It is not altogether suprising that the stern edifice should crack in sympathy with an animal (and I would not quibble with "falter" in that line). Humans have more resources through which they come to terms with their grief.

Not inclined to vote but to admire.

epigone

[Brian Jones]

[quote]Originally posted by R. S. Gwynn:
BUTCHERING

My mother's mother, toughened by the farm,
hardened by infants' burials, used a knife
and swung an axe as if her woman's arm
wielded a man's hard will. Inured to life
and death alike, "What ails you now?" she'd say
ungently to the sick. She fed them too,
roughly but well, and took the blood away--
and washed the dead, if there was that to do.
She told us children how the cows could sense
when their own calves were marked for butchering,
and how they lowed, their wordless eloquence
impossible to still with anything--
sweet clover, or her unremitting care.
She told it simply, but she faltered there.

I wonder if the admirable economy and monolithicity of the poem wouldn't be even more striking if
(a) "poetic" terms like "wordless eloquence" and "unremitting care" were simply omitted (in the first case) or brought into the same resonant sphere of discourse (in the second); and
(b) that last line, which seems unneeded, and even sentimental (especially in such a context), were replaced by something that merely closes the <u>action</u>, without the implicit comment on it (in other words, she didn't just falter there, for me, which is what would work--as a stage direction, for instance).
Of course there's the metre to make, but the poem seems to ask for an ending something more like:

and how they lowed, impossible to still,
no sweet clover, no [other real attempt at relief],
no [other real attempt], [her actions ended].

which together would intimate concretely the repeated efforts of the abstract "unremitting care"--and indeed, deftly constructed, might end the poem just there, as one then imagines her <u>trying</u> and failing, trying and failing, to relieve the mother--this ungentle woman--and would be inclined--and allowed--to 'fill in' her feeling, simply and vividly, oneself.

[Fred Longworth]

I might substitute "plainly" in the final line in place of "simply." I would do this for the reason that the sonnet is not, to my eye, exploring the dimension of simple vs. complex, but more the contrast between toughened/hardened/seasoned-to-the-world vs. softened and sympathetic.

But I really like this! Superbly written!

Fred

[Brian Jones]

[quote]Originally posted by Fred Longworth:
I might substitute "plainly" in the final line in place of "simply." I would do this for the reason that the sonnet is not, to my eye, exploring the dimension of simple vs. complex, but more the contrast between toughened/hardened/seasoned-to-the-world vs. softened and sympathetic.

Thanks, Fred. I love plainness above all things, and applaud the substitution; but certainly didn't mean to suggest that the poem is "exploring the dimension of simple vs. complex" (although we, in a sense, are forced to explore that unpleasant dichotomy within ourselves <u>because</u> of the poem, I think), merely that it might be even stronger if its quiddity were maintained to the end--more like something Archilochus might have knocked off after replenishing his pack at some farm on the way.

What it <u>is</u> exploring--or explores in me, at least--is something deeper and broader than (though embracing) your latter distinction, which I'd be foolish to try and express in my present state of stupefied fatigue, but would like to take a crack at when able.
It's something about the <u>way</u> of feeling, rather than the quality or quantity of feeling itself--(o)utter feeling, if you will, like that of angels.

--------

My apologies, Fred, in the unlikely event of you having sought and missed my addition. Here, only because I hate incompleteness, is the crack (the chasm is over in the manual).

From the Duinos:

Did not the wariness of human gestures on Attic steles
make you marvel?

(2:66-7)

Describing the angels:

...tumults of
storming enraptured feeling and suddenly, solitary,
<u>mirrors</u>: which draw their own beauty, streaming out,
back again into their own countenance.

But we, when we feel, evaporate; ah we
breathe ourselves out and away...
Like dew from the early morning grass
what is us rises from us, like the heat from a
hot meal.

(2:14-19/25-7)

That "wariness of human gestures" is a wariness of stone; pure, filled, complete, self-contained, without the leakage of psychology or personhood. And that feeling, that angelic feeling--felt by us all when we share in their being--is just as pure, complete and self-contained as stone, or as a mirror, mirroring nothing, in(de)finitely.
It's not that the woman, then, feels this or that, or feels much or little, but that she feels the <u>way</u> an angel feels, in this stony way, infinitely expressive--yet unfeeling.
The wonder is that such perfectly self-contained things can yet express so much, impress us so much; and that's my problem with the ending, put another way: her grief and sympathy for the mother is less impressive, and finally less true to her luminous quiddity in the poem, when she--and the poem--breaks like us, who "when we feel, evaporate".

Thanks again for your comment on the manual.

Brian




[This message has been edited by Brian Jones (edited April 13, 2004).]