Dear Colleagues, you may have noticed that Richard Wilbur will be our guest lariat starting February 4 or so. I have traditionally welcomed my guests by initiating a thread at Mastery. Let's start with the title poem of Dick's latest collection, published to coincide with his 80th birthday in 2000. I have used initial dashes to indicate indentation.

Mayflies

In somber forest, when the sun was low,
I saw from unseen pools a mist of flies
— — In their quadrillions rise
And animate a ragged patch of glow
With sudden glittering—as when a crowd
— — — Of stars appear
Through a brief gap in black and driven cloud,
One arc of their great round-dance showing clear.

It was no muddled swarm I witnessed, for
In entrechats each fluttering insect there
— — Rose two steep yards in air,
Then slowly floated down to climb once more,
So that they all composed a manifold
— — — And figured scene,
And seemed the weavers of some cloth of gold,
Or the fine pistons of some bright machine.

Watching these lifelong dancers of a day
As night closed in, I felt myself alone
— — In a life too much my own,
More mortal in my separateness than they—
Unless, I thought, I had been called to be
— — — Not fly or star
But one whose task is joyfully to see
How fair the fiats of the caller are.

Tim:
This was one of those rare poems that reminds me why I keep reading and reading despite the frequent disappointment of mediocre verse, my own included. It took hold of me from the first reading and does so anew with each subsequent reading, getting better and better. Thanks for posting it.
RPW (no, not THAT RPW!)

I may have told this story here, but the first time we heard Mayflies, Richard brought it down, pencilled on tablet, from his loft at Key West, and read it aloud. As usual, he was somewhat nervous and bashful. And no sooner had he finished it than he said he was uncomfortable with "fiats" in the last line. "Is it too obscure?" Thought maybe it should be "dictates." Charlee said "Hell no," and Alan cried "Fiat lux!" Charlee and the EfH saved the day.

Tim-

I don't have time to respond to the poem (this one isn't in the "Complete Poems", is it?), but I can help you with the indentations--just put [color= wite] (I've intentionally mispelled it so the text will show up here) [/color] around the dashes or periods and they won't show up.

Mayflies

In somber forest, when the sun was low,
I saw from unseen pools a mist of flies
— — In their quadrillions rise

"Quadrillions" is a gorgeous sound, but it takes huge poetic license.

And animate a ragged patch of glow
With sudden glittering—as when a crowd
— — — Of stars appear
Through a brief gap in black and driven cloud,


This could only be the Milky Way, and I'm not sure that it comes close (visibly) to "quadrillions." "Crowd" drives it, so it appears that the image is rime-driven.


One arc of their great round-dance showing clear.

It was no muddled swarm I witnessed, for
In entrechats each fluttering insect there
— — Rose two steep yards in air,
Then slowly floated down to climb once more,
So that they all composed a manifold
— — — And figured scene,
And seemed the weavers of some cloth of gold,
Or the fine pistons of some bright machine.


I'm deeply into mayflies, and I find this splendid.


Watching these lifelong dancers of a day
As night closed in, I felt myself alone
— — In a life too much my own,
More mortal in my separateness than they—
Unless, I thought, I had been called to be
— — — Not fly or star


Shouldn't this be "Not fly nor star"?


But one whose task is joyfully to see
How fair the fiats of the caller are.


Utterly Shameless O'Clawson, the Gnatpicker





[This message has been edited by Robert J. Clawson (edited January 26, 2003).]

Tim--

Thanks for posting "Mayflies," which is one of my favorite Wilbur poems (along with "For C." and "A Barred Owl" from the same book--unlike everyone else, Wilbur seems to get better and better with age).

And what a great story about the ending! Alan, even with all your other fine editing work here, and for Tim, and I'm sure elsewhere, it must be a highlight to have helped dissuade such a great master from second-guessing himself and tinkering with perfection!

Best regards.

--Bruce

Bruce, Dick isn't the only one getting better with age. Tony Hecht's new The Darkness and the Light is Murphy's favorite Hecht collection. Tony turned 80 this month, and he's giving Dick a run for his money. I'm glad you mentioned For C, along with Hamlen Brook, one of my two favorite Wilbur poems. He read it to us about two weeks before its Valentine's Day, 1997, appearance in The New Yorker.

For C.

After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges where,
A slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare,
She looks up toward the window where he waits,
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.

On such grand scale do lovers say goodbye-
Even this other pair whose high romance
Had only the duration of a dance,
And who, now taking leave with stricken eye,
See each in each a whole new life foregone.
For them, above the darkling clubhouse lawn,

Bright Perseids flash and crumble; while for these
Who part now on the dock, weighed down by grief
And baggage, yet with something like relief,
It takes three thousand miles of knitting seas
To cancel out their crossing and unmake
The amorous rough and tumble of their wake.

We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse
And bittersweet regrets, and cannot share
The frequent vistas of their large despair,
Where love and all are swept to nothingness;
Still there's a certain scope in that long love
Which constant spirits are the keepers of,

And which, though taken to be tame and staid,
Is a wild sostenuto of the heart,
A passion joined to courtesy and art
Which has the quality of something made,
Like a good fiddle, like the rose's scent,
Like a rose window or the firmament.

After hearing something like this from the horse's mouth, it's hard not to wonder "What the hell am I doing in this game?"

Tim, for the last line of Mayflies, how I wish one of you present, as you related elsewhere, might have experienced a vision of the Caller's fleet of Italian cars and suggested that Mr. Wilbur either use his alternative, "dictates," or else another fitting word such as measures, mandates, canons, choices, etc. "Fiats" makes for neat alliteration, is shortest, and does invoke 'Let there be light' for latinists, but the pesky automobile connotation probably subverts the line a little for a number of readers.


W/G

[This message has been edited by Golias (edited January 28, 2003).]

[quote]Originally posted by Golias:

"Fiats" makes for neat alliteration, is shortest, and does invoke 'Let there be light' for latinists, but the pesky automobile connotation probably subverts the line a little for a number of readers."

Yes, but not so badly as, say, "how fair Bugatties for the caller are."

"Quadrillions" was chosen not simply for
its suggestion of innumerable mayflies,
but for its echo of "quadrille." The poem
is built around dance metaphors.

Yet the "caller" is more than just a
square dance caller. In Wilbur's
Christian perspective, He is the "Caller"
who summons us all to Him. That makes
"fiat" not only quite beautiful, but brilliant.

Had a pm from John Beaton, who was thinking about Wilbur's desideratum, "accurate words." He had just watched his mother-in-law "calling" the Scottish country dances on Burns Night, and he confessed "she has a certain god-like authority about her."

In Mayflies the caller seems to be the One who calls His creatures to their roles or vocations -- as in a call to the ministry or priesthood: "Many are called, but few are chosen," which is one argument for "How fair the choices of the caller are."

W/G

I suppose "fiat" has an equally pesky connotation for paper money, but the meaning in context is immediate and unmistakeable. I think it's a wonderfully nuanced line.

------------------
Bill

Increasingly, I feel that diction IS poetry. For me, quadrillions and fiats MAKE the poem. And boy does he have a way with phrases ("dancers of a day"--for the mayflies are indeed ephemerae). He's a poet of supreme felicity.

Indeed, I think one of the dangers that CAN be inherent in a workshop atmosphere is the tall poppy syndrome--that anything out of the usual, that calls attention to itself, will be singled out for comment. It takes a strong will to stand by an unpopular choice. Of course, it may be good to be challenged on such choices, but I do wonder... Sometimes too much second-guessing is not a good thing. We also have to learn to trust our intuitions.

I love how "fair" is both "beautiful" and "just" in this line.

I also love the supple metrical pattern here, 5's interspersed with 3s and 2s, which suggests the back and forward movements of a round-dance. The indentations for the short lines also result in the visual evocation of the dancing column of mayflies in their mathematical and balletic motions.

It also reminds me a bit of Lucretius (well, what doesn't these days, I hear someone say...) as he looks at the motes in a beam of light and has intimations of atoms and the workings of the ordered universe.

Wilbur is one of my two absolutely favorite living poets, both masters of diction. For me, Wilbur represents the more Norman inheritance of English, and Heaney (my other favorite) the more Anglo-Saxon. (Not to say either is exclusively one or the other--am talking of emphasis.) They represent almost opposite lexical textures--but perhaps that is why I value them both so.

There. Alicia, as usual, said it better
than I could. I applaud her great good sense
(shown in agreeing with me).

On the indentions of the poem,
Wilbur has always, as far back as I can
remember, indented his nonce stanzas
(and "Mayflies" uses a true stanza, a
repeated, exact pattern) to show his
meter. In that sense, the 2s and 3s here
are not sprinkled through the poem, but are
quite regular in their pattern. I think
Hardy and Herbert tend to do the same, though
I'm sure there must be instances where they
don't follow the practice precisely.

As for "fiats," that perfect word, being reminiscent of the car, if that's a problem I say change the name of the car. What its use in this poem does is to return to the word its original majesty, washing it clean of gas and oil. And isn't that one of the tasks of poetry, to return language to what it was--or could be? But only very great poems can do that, like this one.

I like this poem so much that I wouldn't have thought my liking could increase, but this discussion, and especially Alicia's and Rhina's comments, have made me like and appreciate it all the more. I'm always fascinated when what I take to be the solitary pleasures of poetry are enhanced by community. Well, language IS communal, a resource that lies incomplete in any individual -- although Wilbur makes me wonder if there isn't here and there an individual who does indeed possess it complete.
Richard

Sorry, Len--didn't mean to suggest that the 3's and 2's weren't in a pattern.

I am very enamoured of the effect of short lines in IP--for instance in Larkin, who often uses 3's (a standard ip variation we see in Dryden & Milton, for instance, but which seems rare for contemporary practitioners).

Rhina is absolutely right (per usual!)--surely one of the poet's jobs is to rid words of their stifling accretions and return them to their radical (root) sense, so that they can be vigorous again.

[quote]Originally posted by Len Krisak:

[b]"Quadrillions" was chosen not simply for
its suggestion of innumerable mayflies,
but for its echo of "quadrille." The poem
is built around dance metaphors.


Thanks, Len. I find this instructive. It's echo could also include "cotillion."

Was just reading an essay by Frank Kearful on Wilbur & Hecht in the latest Leviathan Quarterly (in which OUR Terese has a Ronsard translation), and it discusses this poem a bit:

Wilbur has always been a tactfully resonant poet, and incidental echoes of Wordsworth (rhyming with cloud, a crowd of stars rather than a crowd of daffodils appears), of Bishop (whose fireflies "begin to rise" in 'A Cold Spring'), and of James Merrill's tones and manner (not only when the fluttering insects begin their entrechats) add to one's pleasure in reading 'Mayflies'. The poem most immediately brought to mind, however, is Lowell's 'Mr. Edwards and the Spider', to which Mr. Wilbur's mayflies perform a reply.

I thought that was all quite interesting, and mostly apt, although it strikes me that the "crowd of stars" most immediately echoes Yeats--the close of "When You Are Old" (speaking of Ronsard!)--"And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

I'd like to think one poem with which it immediately converses is Murphy's, a quatrain Dick extravagantly praised shortly before he wrote Mayflies.

The Hatch

Over the sodden ditches
midges and mayflies swarm,
harbingers of riches
and offspring of the storm.

Bob, You're quite welcome.
I had not thought of "cotillion."

Incidentally, the famously reticent
Mr. Wilbur, when I somewhat boorishly
caught him at a reception and told him
how wonderful I thought the buried sense
of the "caller" was in this poem,
simply beamed at me. And kept on beaming...
with no reply! But then, I think he was
beaming at everybody. Reticence and dignity
and decorum don't begin to cover this subject!

Tim,

Why would mayflies be "offspring of the storm"? Have we the same bug in mind? Because mayflies' wings are so fragile, they have to mate in calm weather.

Bob

Regarding "quadrillions," the following evidence leaves me no other recourse but to bow to Mr. Wilbur.

"In an unheralded and sometimes annoying consequence of cleaner waterways, mayflies are mating and dying in greater numbers than they have in half a century. The insects have been swarming in such volumes this summer that they have to be shoveled from riverside streets and scraped from bridges with snowplows.

Fifteen times this summer at twilight, Randall A. Grady, the police chief in this little Mississippi River town, said he had to dispatch an officer to turn off the street lights so as not to attract the mating flies. One night, he said, the officer had to put on a raincoat because there were so many winged missiles in the air.

With layers of slippery, dying mayflies on the streets, people here say an evening stroll can be perilous. The dead flies coat the decks of boats. Mornings after a big swarm, merchants have to power-wash the corpses from their windows.

"They build up, layer upon layer," said Cathy Corpian, who has a bookkeeping and telephone answering service here. "They're greasy. They stick to you. They stink. They smell like dead fish."

But Ms. Corpian added, "They're good." "

I'm used to prowling somewhat smaller rivers than the Mississippi. Mayfly swarms over the Great Lakes get picked up by Doppler radar. "Incoming! Duck."

I don't think that Wilbur had the Mississippi or Lake Superior in mind, given the details of his poem, or he might have resorted to "bazillions."

Bob the Penitent

Bob, On the High Plains, it takes a big rain to hatch them. So they are infrequent, like our crops! I love bazillions, and I'll suggest it to him.

[quote]Originally posted by Tim Murphy:

"On the High Plains, it takes a big rain to hatch them. So they are infrequent, like our crops!"

Well, that's unusual, in that where I've fly fished -- the eastern U.S., Montana, Alaska, Ireland, Wales -- they're periodic. Locally, as long as the weather cooperates, we can fish predictably to their schedule.

From my readings, I understand that this is true globally, the nature of the beast. So, in my estimation, Fargo grows stranger and stranger..."beaucoup dinky," as Meserve (Sean Penn) says in de Palma's "Casualties of War."

Shameless

celestial dance
 

The last verse of Mayflies pretty much sums up my reason to be ... at least with regard to my celebration of nature through poems.

Has anyone here (on this forum) ever experienced the dance he is describing? Those were not "mayflies" in a technical sense. They were "midges" and the "dance" was a mating ceremony wherein a lot of action takes place. The movement he describes takes careful observation to discern. Individual midges rise (fly) quickly up the center of the spherical group and then fan out to the side before dropping/floating gradually down to the bottom, where the individual repeats the pattern, shooting up the center once again.

This is really an extraordinary insect mating dance, one of my favorites. And it is most easily seen near dusk, when the sun is low, and when the midges are backlit. This makes them literally shine in the air, especially if one is positioned so that the background is dark. In such circumstances, the midge gathering looks like a gathering of stardust particles, all partaking in a celestial dance.

From my perspective, “fiat” is perhaps not the right word to use in that last line, at least if the intent is to communicate experience to the world at large (as opposed to the world of practiced poets who may cheer the use of unconventional words). The common person, including the “average naturalist” to whom the poem will be incredibly meaningful (because of intimate familiarity with the phenomenon being described), will be thrown by that word. I was thrown and had to look it up, the only fiat in my vocabulary being an automobile. Yes, I stumbled on that last line and this seems out of synch with the rest of the poem, which flowed like silk. I have shared this poem numerous times with fellow naturalists, but I always feel compelled to explain that last line, knowing that others will stumble over the automobile just as I did.

Yes, when I read that wonderful third stanza, I feel that I'm back with my old friend George Herbert again.

How did we ever stray away from rhyme & meter?

For Robert Clawson
The Milky Way when seen from a clear of pollution vantagepoint is literally like a stain of milk in parts, there are so many stars it appears like clouds, even a carpet of white, it is patchy but I think those in the Northern Hemisphere forget or don't know what it's like. As for the poem, it is a marvel of the craft. For me quite slow and stately, perhaps too much so, but still wonderfully composed. I think the last line also fails, if 'fiat' was singualr perhaps, but for me 'how fair the fiats' immediately conjurs up a traffic jam in Genova.

fiat lux!!

illumination on all creation
 

yes ... let there be light!

p.s. I've been informed that it's a no-no to bring forth an old, closed post, as I have clearly done. My apology to all who have been annoyed! Fiat lux!

Hi Lang,

welcome, & it’s true, the bringing up of old threads is frowned upon: I was waiting for someone to jump on you for that.

But, for the life of me, I can’t remember why it is frowned upon. I’m getting old & my memory was never that good anyway, but I dimly recall that there was a rather plausible reason once cited for this policy. I can’t come up with it, & am left wondering, why is this a problem? The critical forums (Musing on Mastery, Discerning Eye, Distinguished Guest), as well as General Talk, have deep archives of wonderfully interesting threads dating back to the last millennium or thereabouts. Why are these off-limits for revival? I can’t remember.

And your comments on the midges are a wonderful addition to the thread; I daresay Wilbur himself would relish them. As for “fiats”— see Rhina’s post, #16 in the thread, & Alicia Stallings: “quadrillions and fiats MAKE the poem” (#14). And especially Tim’s post #3, which has stuck in my mind since I first read it (some things I do remember): Wilbur himself was worried that “fiats” was too obscure, and Alan Sullivan (an Eratosphere legend, now deceased) reassured him with “fiat lux!” (& cf. Ralph, #30). The pluralization of “fiat” is like a privileging of particulars: the one-size-fits-all creation of light is broken down into the particular things that are lighted, each one calling forth its own light. If this might get confused with Italian cars, well, it’s a poetical risk worth taking.

Anyway, for my part, I provisionally thank you for reviving this old thread, pending my being reminded of why this is a bad thing to do.

I'm going to risk being insubordinate and say: There is no blinking reason why old Mastery or Discerning Eye or other threads on criticism should not be bumped up under current conditions.

The rule about not bumping up old threads pertains to poems on the poetry boards. It exists because poets generally reach a point of closure about a poem before it disappears from the first page and long before it's pruned. When new members looking to rack up fifteen critiques choose to comment on old poems, newer poems get less attention and no one is happy. Thus the rule. It's probably evident that the rule was devised in a time when board activity was much heavier.

Dear moderators, anything that livens up critical discussion is a good thing. It shouldn't be quashed because of overextension of the rules. If the guidelines need clarifying, let's do that.

Thanks, Lang, for prompting this.

Thank you Alder and Maryann, for your thoughtful comments, and for coming to my rescue, so to speak. Of course, my intent was only to comment on a poem I find extremely interesting and deeply meaningful, not at all to challenge authority (although I've been known to do that).

In any event, if I had been involved in the original thread, I would have shouted loudly against using fiat in that last line. It's really a matter of intended audience. If a poem is written for the literati, then it is okay to fiat them to death. But if it is written for the rest of us, who are smart but not very smart, then it is important to get a reality-check before setting the words in concrete.

I think reviving old threads has been frowned upon only when someone has re-opened them merely to add a pointless comment like "I agree" or to react acrimoniously to some commentator who has perhaps long since left the Sphere. That is clearly not the case here.

I have to say I'm a fan of the "fiats". What greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the poem was when someone explained to me the dance-related meaning of the word "caller", which I did not know.

Lang, I don't know what's so terrible about having to look up a word.

The word "fiat" here is particularly right since the Latin translation of God's let-there-bes is "fiat," as in "fiat lux" (let there be light), and many readers, even the ones you call "common," will know that as well.

last stanza brilliant
 

Just to make sure I'm not being misunderstood ...

While I am not thrilled with the exact wording of the last line of Mayflies, I am hugely fond of the last stanza and the meaning it conveys. For me, it reflects the sentiment of religious scholar Thomas Berry, who wrote the book "Dream of the Earth." In it, he proposes that we humans have sprung out of the evolutionary process as a vehicle for nature (or creation) to witness and appreciate itself.

While many of us feel estranged or separated from nature, it is important to realize this is an illusion, a cultural misunderstanding of sorts. No matter what we think or do, we are "of nature," made completely of the stuff of nature and hence are fully connected, under all circumstances. Wilbur addresses this beautifully in the last stanza by acknowledging a feeling of separateness and then shedding that feeling in favor of accepting the role of witness, of being the eyes and ears of creation appreciating itself. Or at least that's what I think he's saying.

In my world, this is an important, perhaps even revolutionary, idea that is central to my life's work.

uneducated
 

Roger:

I'll be the first to admit my own lack of education. Nonetheless, I'll hold my ground. I'd rather that the last sentence not require a dictionary check by anyone because that interrupts the flow of the beautiful idea being conveyed. Imagine doing that in a song, where there are no words to see. For me, this poem is a song ... I hear it singing as I read it, and it excites my heart.

But I'm curious, Lang. Now that you know the word and have assimilated it into your vocabulary, does the word now work for you in the poem? I understand that you feel it is unfortunate that your initial engagement with the poem was interrupted by a "dictionary check," but now, with the dictionary check behind you, and leaving aside your concern for other readers who may be called upon to consult the dictionary when they first encounter the poem, do you find that the issue of the word has become moot for you now that the word is familiar?

creatures of God's decree
 

Roger:

It does work for me now, though still seems a tad abstruse ... how fair the decrees of the caller are.

I think he's simply saying: How fair are the creatures of God's decree" ... in reference to Day 6 of creation. Or else: "How fair are the objects of creation" or, better yet, "How fair are the creatures of God."

Whatever, the idea being put forward is wonderful, that our task as humans is to joyfully see and experience creation. If we look upon the earth and stars from that reverent and selfless point of view, our separateness dissolves and we literally become the eyes of God.

I am so incredibly moved by this amazing poem.