Winter Wheat
 

Winter Wheat


Our prairie views are skewered, ever West;
ours is a land of drought and blowing sand,
and any coursing eagle can attest
it is a chore to fathom western land.
The sun subsides behind the mountain’s breast,
embittered ranchers hoard the Kruggerand,
and last night when I lay down to my rest,
I heard my Father’s clarion command:

The word made flesh. I breathed this to Saint John
who stood beside my bride, my own son’s cross.
I built you mountains you could climb upon,
and once I even flooded inland seas
where winter wheat now rises to your knees.
You are my child. Do not compound my loss.



Comments:

“Mountain’s breast” is too cliché for the rest of the poem, which maintains a convincingly contemporary level of diction.

Winter Wheat

Jesus said, “The field is the world” (Matthew 13:38), and N’s world is crumbling. His “fields” have been destroyed by drought and wind. His views are “skewered”.

At first, I was confused by the use of the word “skewered” in L1. I wanted to read “skewed”. But its allusion to the nails of the cross became crystal clear on subsequent readings. With the reference to the West in L1, the cross in L10, I got the overwhelming impression that N is winter-discontented (to say the least), tired of living and wouldn’t mind riding off into the sunset (for good).

But the title holds an important clue to the sonnet’s resolution. Wheat, of course, has its own particular religious symbolism (believers vs non believers, the Eucharist), but winter wheat takes that symbolism to another level in this poem.

Winter wheat is the favored crop of dryland farming. N’s soul is the drought-destroyed field. Planted in the fall (in faith), winter wheat sprouts prior to winter’s freezing, then lies dormant until the spring (in hope). It needs the cold in order to flower and eventually to be harvested the following spring or early summer. The poet submits that God understands the “dark night of the soul” and comforts his child (in love).

In her Introduction to The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 years of a classic tradition in English, Phillis Levin writes, “The religious sonnet fulfills the possibility that Augustine opens in his spiritual autobiography, his Confessions: memory and imagination liberate the soul from bondage to the past, serving the function of redemption.”(p. lx). I chose this sonnet because I think it epitomizes the spirit of the religious sonnet. And it is heartbreakingly beautiful, too.

I'd be happier if it read mountain's chest. Thanks. Also I'd be happier with a little less regularity.

This has a certain grandeur. I have mixed feelings about the "mountain's breast". I love the last three lines.
It has the dignity of woodcut illustrations in an old Bible.
Janet

I love these lines:
and once I even flooded inland seas
where winter wheat now rises to your knees.

For me, "mountain's breast" just evokes a certain shape - purely visual. Maybe I'm missing something.

The rhythm in this sonnet doesn’t vary much, at least to my ears, and the lines also feel very end-stopped. I like the poem itself better than the rhythm and meter.
The voice is good and seems very genuine. “Kruggerand” was a word I had to look up, which is fine because I learned something new. Some of the religious allusions sailed over my head, but that’s not the poem’s fault.
As simple as it is, I think this line is a real gem: where winter wheat now rises to your knees.

Descriptively I am right with this in the octave. And I am especially intrigued by these lines:

and any coursing eagle can attest
it is a chore to fathom western land.

This makes me look forward with great anticipation to the sestet, awaiting the clarion command. I am eager for this coursing eagle to indeed lead me in some mystical fashion toward Mythic True West.

As the sestet begins, I realize abruptly that I am going to be forced to modify the expansiveness of my expectations. Is it a matter of temperament that I prefer my sense of the infinite to be minted in a coin less 'doctrinaire'? Of course it is. As a result I am forced back from heart to head here, for I must translate the severely sensual rush of that expanding heartscape into symbolic terms that do not come readily to it. Yet I know that I am willing to do this because I trust the octet so implicitly. So I do. And while the rewards of such a theology of landscape are great, they are as well somewhat at odds with the original impulse the poem has lit in my soul.

Now I hear the powerful voice of San Juan de la Cruz echoing in my ear, stoically lamenting the aridity, the painful constriction with which the initial stages of mystical ascent necessarily assail one, this despite the apparently contradictory rush of unquantifyable freedom that is the ultimate reward for undergoing such trials. And I fully realize that, to me, what seems a confining religious symbolism here, might well prove so only for the uninitiated; and that the claim of all such mystical religious doctrine is that it has the opposite effect on one, once one has embraced it with faith, and thus been embraced by it.

Yet the undeniable effect of all this is that the poem is changed radically for me at this point, too radically for me to love it, despite the fact that it will continue to haunt me more than many of the other posted sonnets. The word made land made flesh has been made word again, at least for the time being.

Nemo

Oh, and breast is just fine. The word is made flesh after all.

This is well-written, and the symbolism is consistent and well-used, but it didn't grab me. I suppose it simply isn't my cup of sonnet tea. "Kruggerand" struck me as more a solution to the poet's problems than N's organic word choice. Also the first two lines of the sestet didn't seem necessary to me, which is a big problem in a sonnet like this. Much is weakened when the "Father’s clarion command" is diluted.

David R.

"Mountain's breast" clangs to me, too. As does "to climb upon." Just "climb" will do.

But on a whole I really dig this one.

Much to like here. I rather like "Kruggerand". This does have a grandeur, and reminds me a bit of Milton's "On his Blindness," though Milton would enjamb more. This seemed overly literary though:

and any coursing eagle can attest
it is a chore to fathom western land.

Not wild about eagles "attesting" anything. Or maybe I just don't fully understand what "fathom western land" means...

Into His Hand
Um Portuguese
A Visit on All Saints Day

Mistakenly cast my ballot here after reading again--

I do like this poem quite a lot. It's tone and diction and descriptive quality (especially) are top notch.

RM

Late to the party, as usual, but I wanted to make a theological comment. I understand that the poet wants to underscore that John was both the Evangelist, in whose gospel appears "the Word became flesh," and also the young man who was present with Mary at Jesus' crucifixion; the "cross" is certainly important in this poem about "loss", both God's and the narrator's.

However, having God say "my bride" in reference to Mary disturbed me, not least because I've been reading the Koran for Lent (don't ask) and one of the main Islamic arguments against Jesus being God's son is the ridiculousness of the idea that God would have a consort.

In the Bible and in later Christian literature, the image of the bride is pretty much reserved for describing either the people of Israel, the Christian Church, or the individual soul, using the metaphor of sexual desire to evoke the ideal of a two-way fervency of passion between God and humanity. (Cf. the Song of Solomon, the wedding feast of the Lamb in the book of Revelation, St. John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul", etc., etc. for positive bride images...as well as Jeremiah and Hosea's negative images comparing the faithlessness of God's people to marriage with an unfaithful wife, or even marriage to a harlot.)

I've never seen even REMOTELY sexual metaphors used for Mary, who is pretty consistently portrayed as a non-sexual being--Immaculate, Ever Virgin, Undefiled, Most Chaste, Most Pure, etc. Plus there's the whole Trinity angle--if Jesus is truly God, Mary's role as Mother of God doesn't leave room for her to also be His bride. (Ick.)

So, if the poet wants to avoid distraction there (for me at least--it didn't seem to bother anyone else), I'd suggest using some other word than "my bride" for Mary. For that matter, I wonder if an allusion to the cross without the Word made flesh (or John) would work better in this particular poem, anyway. Just my two cents about a Kruggerand of a poem.

This sonnet gives a feeling of monotony and stasis which is mostly derived from its insistent metrical regularity, and the fact that all the lines are end-stopped. The octave is quite successful at giving a sense of the land’s difficult condition and the ranchers’ situation.

I find the mention of Kruggerand quite helpful in further placing the setting, which I imagine is somewhere at or close to the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Although it’s an arid desert, it is not impossibly dry like a typical desert and sustains vegetation and I suppose cultivation in several areas. The degree of aridity increases the further southwest one goes, which probably explains the attention given to West in L1 and L4.

The sextet makes such a leap from the physical to the metaphysical that it almost feels like it belongs elsewhere, as if the sonnet is suddenly possessed and undergoes an out of body experience. In a way, it’s hoping that the reader suspends disbelief and let the transcendental take over. Reconciling the apparent schism between the splitting of the senses and sense, especially for the nonbeliever, may be part of the sonnet’s devise to take it to a higher plane of understanding. My feeling is that it on that level, it succeeds.

Cheers,
…Alex

No Alex, the situs is before the Front Range of the Rockies, and ranchers distrustful of the Federal Reserve, the IRS, really do use gold coin as a repository for wealth. Time has proved their wisdom. The poem is actually the third section of a fairly major poem called The West.

Julie, I don't see any sexual innuendo in God calling Mary his bride.

Interesting explanation, Tim. Indeed, my first hunch was that you'd written it, but then dismissed that with the Kruggerand thingy. Kruggerand is so predominantly associated with the South African monetary system that I'm sure I won't be the only reader it will throw off ... except for those with special knowledge about the industry in question. If you don't want that reading, that word may not belong in the poem as some other commenters have hinted.

Cheers,
...Alex

Actually, Alex, this is not a stand-alone, but the third section of The West, so in context the location is not in doubt. The Kruggerand dominates the gold coin hoardings of the world, little surprise considering South Africa's production and the fact that the coin has been around so much longer than the American Eagle. I have put the reader at a disadvantage by quoting only the poem's conclusion, but I wanted to submit something not workshopped here; and I am gratified that many found kind things to say about it.

Tim, I was interested to hear this is the conclusion of a longer poem. The last five words as posted had thrown me a little, since they refer to this being a moment of deep personal crisis for the narrator (even beyond the drought and economic hardships described), which I hadn't caught from the prior lines.

Is it possible now to post the first two sections along with this third one, to give the context of the ending, or is that a problem for future publication plans?

Best wishes.