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?