Sonnet #7 - hutte
 

HUTTE IN SCHWARZWALD, 1945

We've talked about this earlier. Wind, please stop
your whispering. They lived here once, they lived
here once. Poplar leaves remain on the blacktop:
dead and gone -- they were the young, the old
who refused to quit life fully, satisfied
with lesser vestiges: mummified on branches,
or slaving on the ground. They know each room,
the roll-your-owns, the cigar ash that hides

beneath board cracks, the absence of two lives
chalked on the safe room floor. And still,
that perfume of flesh in the fireplace. Come fall,
with mildew mottled, they scan our cabin walls
for entrances. What is that muttering.?
The sky is cold. They shiver. They want in.

Obviously, "hutte" should have two dots over the "u", but I was unable to do this on my computer.

I hope no one is scandalized that this one doesn't rhyme. It overpowered me anyway.

Of all the poems posted so far, I'm most interested in seeing the reaction of others to this one.

My own is not very flattering, I'm afraid, but then again I prefer poetry to be more direct and cutting than cryptic and ephemeral. Because of this I'm not comfortable giving a biased critique. I just wish this poem had more for the reader to hang on to.

From the 6th line on, I like this poem a lot, and I think I understand how the first part is going about where it's trying to go. But lines 2-5 don't quite do it -- the off-handedness is just a little too off-hand, the attack just a bit too oblique. Still, I'll remember these images, and the feeling evoked by the end. 'They want in.' How wrong and sad, and beautiful this is.

Ed

Shaun, I disagree; the poem gives the reader plenty to hang on to.

It's set in 1945, either near the end or just after the end of World War II. It's in Germany, in the Black Forest. "Hutte," with the umlaut, is a hut, a small shelter, and "safe room" suggests to me that this was a hiding place. The repetition of "they lived here once" tells us that the speaker is fixed on the past-ness of "they," and that we must infer that they are dead. We can infer that they were Jewish and in hiding. By the end of the poem we know that the speaker feels the presence of their ghosts.

I do have to work a little harder with lines 4-8 than with the other lines. I have to puzzle out that, like the stubbornly remaining leaves, the "they" of the poem hung on, refusing to leave their old lives entirely by fleeing the country.

Sometimes a worthy poem leaves it up to the reader to do a little work.

And there are subjects that are simply more real to people of a particular age. Those of us who had parents who lived through WWII were exposed to more re-thinking of those years, publicly and privately, than younger people were.

I kind of get lost in the cigar ash, but the poem develops an amazing momentum and power as it moves to its arresting close. And I have no problem reading an unrhymed sonnet.

I think the opening should be physically designed thus.

We've talked about this earlier. Wind, please stop
your whispering: They lived here once, they lived
here once.

I think the poem does not live up to those lines. The serial colons in the lines that follow are a huge distraction to my eye. These lines are stiffly expository:

they were the young, the old
who refused to quit life fully, satisfied
with lesser vestiges:

And the turn seems to be replaced by no more than an uncomfortable enjambment.

Nemo

Maryann: I've always found that to be Eratosphere's greatest strength (in terms of critiques): having two completely different takes on the same poem and having neither of them be "wrong" per se.

I very much like the non-rhyme.
'perfume of flesh' is the creepy give-away.
Not sure I understand 'chalked', and perhaps safe-room could be hyphenated, but this poem hits hard in the gut. I very much like the oddity of 'they lived here once' appearing twice; and wonder how much wd be changed with another echoing part-repetition, changing L4 to 'the young and gone, the old....'. Not expecting an answer, but is the break only there to delineate oct/ses? I don't see that it adds anything to the poem (but if an answer appears among other replies, I'd be happy to learn).

I like Maryann's explanation, but I'm stymied by two lives CHALKED on the safe room floor. If the occupants were Jewish refugees, why "chalked" and why only two? Does "chalked" mean what it means in detective stories or is there another reading?

Far be it from me to be "scandalized" by a non-rhyming sonnet ;). Even free-wheeling meter doesn`t bother me, and perhaps the unquiet spirits in this sonnet need the bump-in-the-night rhythm in order to portray their insistence. If so, good. If not, there are several quite jarring lines, e.g., lines 3 and 6.

As for the chalk, I immediately thought of the lime scattered on the bodies thrown into common graves, and also how people in hiding often chalked up the days spent in hiding . . .

I think the last line is a very effective close. Kind of brought to mind Catherine banging on the window outside Heathcliff`s room.

As for the umlaut over the U, for a capital press ALT + 0220, for small, press ALT + 0252.

I certainly don't have a problem with the lack of rime: particularly when the sonnet opens with a turn of phrase which almost forces us to hear the German (or Czech, or Polish) this was translated from:

We've talked about this earlier.

the insistence that there are things one doesn't say (or at least not here, and not now) seems to me still characteristic of central European consciousness: I find it even in conversations in bars in Mandelbachtal - at least when older folk are present.

I thought the sense that this is not the original language of the poem (not necessarily in the sense that the poem is a translation, but that the poem is avoiding saying what it most needs to say) stayed strong through most of the octave, where many of the expressions seem deliberately forced into terseness.

But 'mummified on branches' strikes a discordant note of fine writing for me, and a mildew mottled Fall seems almost Keatsian. I similarly didn't like the hint of Emily Brontë at the end: I don't think you can mix Gothic sensibilities with the inexorably terse horrors of a Gunter Eich.

I found the sonnet unsatisfying: it started so well, but then got distressingly poetic. But it did start very well.

I remember this poem (or a version of it) having been posted some time ago in the Deep End, which must mean it made an impression, since my memory isn't very good. It seems clearly Holocaust-related, but purposely difficult to work out in its details. This is apt in a way without being gimmicky. Post-Adorno Holocaust poetry is inherently problematic, tasked with the need to register that which is too big for the littleness of a poem, too horrible for the decorousness of a poem. The last thing such poetry should want to be (or seem) is all worked out.

"We've talked about this earlier" is, for one thing, somewhat unidiomatic; why not just "We talked about this before"? But, more importantly, it cuts off a larger context the way a Browning monologue would, indicating the need for imaginative effort on the reader's part.

In this passage…

they were the young, the old
who refused to quit life fully, satisfied
with lesser vestiges

the subversion of the idiomatic phrase "fully satisfied" by the comma between the words is curious. But this is perhaps the key idea of the poem, the "lesser vestiges" being represented by the poem itself.

Or something like that. This is a tough one, but does make an impression.

I have to agree that the Gothic tone, turning this into some sort of a ghost story
doesn't work for me. Still it is interesting, and I am sure that I'll read it more than
a few times.

Another favourite clamouring for a vote. If anything, I find the hint of rhyme distracting, setting up an unfulfilled expectation. I would have preferred it completely blank. But that’s a small complaint, easily ignored in the power of the intriguing images. The unanswered questions seem entirely appropriate to the “Why?” still echoing down the decades since the obscene tragedy of the Holocaust.
The repeated “they lived here once” is masterful, suggesting parallel interpretations: as in inhabited, and , poignantly, lived before dying.
I understand “refused to quit life fully” as clinging tenaciously to life, so the placement of the comma is correct.

I like the sestet, although I'd like to see "mildew mottled" and "scan" replaced for the reason Christopher cites. The sentence that begins on L3 is very difficult to understand. I'd prefer that the referent of "they"--whether people or leaves--be clear in the octet. The reader should conflate in the sestet, not be confused in the octet. This one is fittingly disturbing.

I interpret this hütte as being, not a safe room, but a cottage in the Black Forest where people lived who did not make it to the safe room, but were cremated at an extermination camp (that perfume of flesh in the fireplace). Their ghosts remain. N is hiking and this is an overnight accommodation.

I think it is an excellent poem, but my reading is likely colored. A friend and I on a wilderness hike spent the seventh night at a hut where the atmosphere was much as described in the poem.

I too thought immediately of Wuthering Heights at the end, it didn't bother me. I didn't see this poem when it was on TDE. No nits.