[Turner Cassity]

Into His Hand


… cupped in sleep, you’d slip a nickel. Such
gentle stealth: no wrist or finger stirred.
His O-mouth gaped, his snoring chuffed and whirred.
That sly transaction: all you knew of touch.
Double shifts of duty on the subways
conducting a shrill orchestra of doors.
After, rotgut with Clancy’s dull-eyed boors.
Back home he’d drop right off; you’d foray
into father’s room, bearing your bright coin.
You loved imagining him, wealthy-waking—
but did he like the joke? It wasn’t spoken.
Today that quiet man lies dead. I join
you, husband, in a rite of our own making:
tucking in his cupped, cosmetic hand
          this subway token.



Comments:
The pronouns need straightening out, and I find the writing, as writing, too complicated for the material. Curiously, the poem gives the effect of free verse, and I do not say this in disparagement.

[Catherine Chandler]

Into His Hand


How important is the title of a poem to the reader’s understanding of the poet’s intention? Of course, many sonnets have no title or are dubbed “Untitled”, or simply “Sonnet”, or are numbered either by the authors themselves or their literary executors. I love poems with great titles and enjoy the process of looking for clues in them in order to more fully appreciate the poem. To help me “get” it.

In a sonnet, we all know that every word is precious and that sonnet writers must be what Keats called “misers of sound and syllable”. Here, the poet has taken the prepositional phrase of the title, and used it, in effect, as part of the first line. As the expression immediately brought to my mind is Jesus’ last words on the cross, the meaning of the title enriched my understanding of what followed.

The biblical quote is, of course: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), and the phrase is also anticipated in Psalm 31:1-5. I surmised then, that “he” is possibly the father (we discover this in L9) of “you” (we find out who this is in L13), and that N. is recounting a recurring childhood experience. In the last line, the words of the title put everything into perspective, and yet leaves the significance of the son’s final “rite” open to the reader’s interpretation. In contrast to the biblical reference, here it is the son who is commending the all-important symbolic subway token, to the father.

I chose this sonnet because (among other reasons) of its wonderful images, its amazing rhymes, its successful bending of the traditional rules, and because it gave me the goose-bumps each and every time I read it.

[Janet Kenny]

I really like this odd sonnet. The line that catches me is L7. I can make it work but I have to have several runs at it. I love Ls 5 & 6.
I don't experience discomfort with the pronouns. Oddly moving.
Janet

[David Anthony]

Strikingly original.
I'm thinking the close is perhaps an allusion to the Communion rite where the priest places a wafer in the communicant's hand.
David

[Tim Murphy]

The highest grade Robert Fitzgerald gave was NAAB, not at all bad. NAAB for this poem.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

There is an eastern European rite of putting coins in the hands of the dead to pay off mortal debts so that the dead do not dun the living.

Still thinking!

Jan

[R. Nemo Hill]

The coin given to the dead seems an obvious allusion to the payment proffered to the mythological ferryman of the dead--which I think is where the custom of placing coins over the eyes came from as well, no? In its transmutation of the coin to a subway token, the resulting marriage of the mythological to the mundane here is quite effective for me: in a quietly profound sense the right of our own making becomes the rite of making the myth our own. And that is a sacred rite indeed!

Sure, the pronouns are a little entangled on one's first read, but unknitting them is part of the poem's emotional evolution as the point of view keeps shifting: from you, to he, to I, and ultimately to us. That final shift to us is a shift of unbearable poignancy as what was shared only in an unspoken fashion between a distant father and son becomes a more conscious ritual of intimacy between husband and wife, one that both heals the former distance through return and bodes well for what is close-at-hand in the present and opened-up for the future. This gives the poem an arc of psychological development and an emotional resolution that seems glowingly healthy, a true making of peace with the dead and a true sharing with the living. As such the poem itself is bearing the bright coin, and the reader himself is wealthy-waking on having emerged from meditation upon it.

Hands down (and open) my favorite so far.

Nemo

[Petra Norr]

This sonnet is very original and I quite like it. It has so much in it. In just 15 lines it manages to convey a lot about the people. It did take me a couple of reads to figure out what was going on, though. The narrator is the wife of a man whose father has passed away. The father was a subway driver who worked double shifts and then went off to the bar to drink with his friends. As soon as he got home, he’d fall asleep. The son would playfully and slyly put a nickel in his sleeping dad’s hand. This line stands out for me:
That sly transaction: all you knew of touch.
His dad works all the time, maybe drinks too much as well. The son probably doesn’t get to be with his dad all that much, and doesn’t get the hugs and affection that other kids get. This line also implies a distance between father and son:
but did he like the joke? It wasn’t spoken.

I like the ritual of the nickel very much. And I really like the phrase “wealthy-waking”. It’s original, and it also hints that the family didn’t have much money.
As for the subway token at the end, it echoes of course the childhood ritual of the nickel and it suits the subway-driver dad. We can also see the token as fare for the crossing to the other side. But what does it mean on the emotional level? Is the placing of the subway token a cynical gesture or an affectionate one? I’m not sure what to make of it yet.

[Kevin Cutrer]

Wonderful. "Cosmetic hand" is a fine touch.

[Susan McLean]

I like the content of this one very much, though I too was confused at the start about who was doing what, at first assuming it was the father slipping the nickel into the son's hand. It does read like free verse because some of the rhythms of the lines are so irregular that it is hard to hear a consistent beat (I can hear just four beats in L8, for example). The first time through, I was reading for meaning, and the rhythms felt natural, as did the language, but it did not feel like a sonnet. I have no objection to breaking rules when it comes to form, so long as it seems deliberately done. Here, the underpinnings of rhyme give a subtle shape, de-emphasized by the frequent enjambment, and that approach seems to fit the anecdotal nature of the content, which is quite powerful.

Susan