realism
 

Realism

Misery, pre-digested, shoveled in
by earnest people. Too grave to ignore,

too much to swallow. Something live and green
wants to get in – it’s growing through the floor

and creeping up the walls. Its scent when cut
is reminiscent of a woman’s singing.

A high note puts on feathers, preens a bit.
The candles sweat warm pearls. Three seers are bringing

gifts tonight – a bird, a flame, a pen.
They come into the living room with leaves

and tendrils trailing from their feet, their skin
scribbled with storm clouds no one quite believes.

Hi, Hilary—

I thought I had this one figured out for the first 8 lines. Realism always focuses on doomed people victimized by poverty and oppression in a squalid urban setting. When we read a realist story, the stoicism and earnestness exclude nature and natural feelings.

I thought the three seers with gifts had to refer to the Magi, but who or what has been born? Are they meant to represent authors who are celebrating the rebirth of Romanticism? What do the gifts represent? Bird=nature? Flame=emotion? Pen=artifice? (That one is a stretch.) Does no one believe in the storm clouds because realism has trained them to be skeptical of emotional symbolism? Without the title as a key to unlock it, this poem is a sphinx, but I like it.

Glenn

Thanks for tackling this one, Glenn. I appreciate your response and it's helpful to know how you are reading it.

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Hi Hilary, Although the subject may very well have to do with realism, the delivery is anything but! In fact, it borders on the surreal. It has a disturbing darkness in it that hints at something apocalyptic. Or miraculous. I can't tell which. For me, the rhythm is interrupted by the space between the couplets and I can't tie the couplets together.

These lines are little poems:

The candles sweat warm pearls

their skin / scribbled with storm clouds no one quite believes.


Without knowing what the poem is saying exactly, it's hard to suggest with any confidence something that might help it become more reader-friendly. It occurred to me that the spaces between the couplets were preventing me from reading the poem. Perhaps a tighter, more solid block of lines helps:

Misery, pre-digested, shoveled in
by earnest people. Too grave to ignore,
too much to swallow. Something live and green
wants to get in – it’s growing through the floor
and creeping up the walls. Its scent when cut
is reminiscent of a woman’s singing.
A high note puts on feathers, preens a bit.
The candles sweat warm pearls. Three seers are bringing
gifts tonight – a bird, a flame, a pen.
They come into the living room with leaves
and tendrils trailing from their feet, their skin
scribbled with storm clouds no one quite believes.

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Very nicely written overall, and amusingly fastidious rhyme-scheme: quatrains with slant rhymes in lines 1 & 3, full rhymes in 2 & 4.

As I read it, “Realism” refers to seeing things the way they actually are, as opposed to the way it is said, or you are told, they are. So, there are 2 “realist” moves in the poem: away from “misery” at the outset, & then, ironically, in the last line, back towards misery (storm clouds), at least potentially. “Realism” is a matter of restoring balance between pessimism & optimism, not getting carried away with either. They are like drugs, and the realist stays off the drugs. (But then, what motivates her or him to get up in the morning?)

Hi Hilary,


There is irony, in a serious vein, running through this as I read it. It builds visually into a surreal picture. A paradoxical quality to reality seems to be the engine.

The most "real" part of the poem is the first few lines, which establish a loam from which the tendrils shoot.



There are several great moments.

Its scent when cut
is reminiscent of a woman’s singing.

is Daliesque, sans nonsense.

The arrival of the Magi at the end is a splendid culmination! Love how they emanate from the living green bringing the clouds and scribbling something nobody....believes. Suggesting that that which is truly real not only seems unreal, but is commonly rejected.

So, that's my read. I really like this one!

Rick

Thank you, Jim, Alder, and Rick. Each of your comments is helpful.

Alder, I don't really agree that realism is about staying off drugs, and I'm not sure this poem agrees either.

I am glad to hear this, especially the uncertainty as to whether what's happening is miraculous or apocalyptic (is it either/or?).

Regarding the formatting, I had a more compact form at first but wanted to break it up and let some light in. I might be open to changing it again, but I'm not necessarily trying to make this one reader-friendly.


Yes. That.

Hilary, I love the way this takes off in the second stanza into surrealism and synesthesia. I think it is suggesting the "more than real" that poetry can provide, so I feel no need to pin down the details into normal equivalents in reality. I did see the "warm pearls" partly as the drops of wax that flow down the candle, but with actual "warm pearls" and feathers in the woman's singing (transferred perhaps from the woman who is doing the singing). Anyway, I thought the effect was magical.

Susan

Thank you, Susan, that's helpful. Yes, this poem isn't really a code to be deciphered or translated into something more comprehensible; it's just itself.

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Yes, either/or, depending on my mood.

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