[Tim Murphy]

We're just going to have one thread, a sort of giant open mic where Spherians can post their favorite despairing poems, reflect on the canon, converse with one another. The discussion will be led by Jeff Holt, whom you can hear reading his work over at Distinguished Performances:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=10903

I'll be presenting three of Jeff's poems and sharing my thoughts on this very talented poet tomorrow. Josh Mehigan, originally scheduled for this event, can't participate, but Jeff will post his thoughts on his close friend. Rhina Espaillat and Suzanne Doyle have graciously agreed to participate. Tuesday morning I'm off to South Dakota, with no access to computers for a couple days. yr lariat, Tim

[Jeff Holt]

Greetings, all! This is just a quick note to thank Tim, Rhina and Suzanne for participating in this endeavor. Tim and I have been talking about doing something similar to this for months now. It's unfortunate that Josh can't participate, as he is one of the most formidable poets, and best friends, that I have ever had, but we had a great time together at West Chester. There was little despair at the conference; it was wonderful to participate in Rhina finally getting her due as the keynote speaker, and being the subject of an entire panel discussion.

But now, to the topic at hand: I am starting with a brief note here outlining my initial plan. Tomorrow, fairly early I hope--there are wife and children variables that are beyond my control--I will post an essay analyzing poems by 4 of my favorite poets of "quiet despair": Thomas Lovell Beddoes, James Thomson (B.V.), Weldon Kees, and Philip Larkin. In my opinion, only Larkin has gotten his fair share in the way of recognition by posterity. My purpose in bringing these 4 poets together is to demonstrate that poetry of despair, which is often read as poetry of isolation, may usefully be read as poetry of compassion. The poetry of despair, esp. the poetry of quiet, as opposed to hysterical, despair, is poetry that speaks truths that almost everyone feels at some point, but often fears to share. By reading poems that express similar, if often buried, sentiments, readers may find connections and realize that other people do, actually, share the same grief and terror, and may, hence, find some comfort in knowing that they are not alone.

That's all I have for now. I want to mention that I will also be commenting on some of Tim's poems from his misspent youth, and sharing some about my friendship with Josh. Furthermore, I will be encouraging everyone reading this to join in and share your own favorite poems of quiet despair, and your thoughts about these and anything else related to this.

May the cheerful celebration of gloom begin!

[Tim Murphy]

For those who weren't around when we did our big women poets symposium a couple years ago, Leslie Monsour hosted a fabulous thread to introduce all of us to Suzanne Doyle, who will co-host with Rhina, Jeff and me: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...=Suzanne+Doyle

[Jeff Holt]

Note: had originally planned to include Larkin in this essay, but will discuss him separately, later.

Reading the Poetry of Quiet Despair as a Poetry of Compassion

Throughout the accepted canon of poetry there are certain recurring themes that tend to draw interest and compassion from readers. For example, readers confronting Wilfrid Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” or Randell Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” may be moved to feel compassion for the suffering of individual victims of war, and, if they are veterans themselves, may be moved that someone else has written eloquently of something so similar to their own experiences. Similarly, a reader confronted with Theodore Roethke “My Poppa’s Waltz” might well feel compassion for the narrator and quite possibly identify with the child of the alcoholic father in the poem. And while such poems ring with grief, they also resound with protest, and it is the element of protesting a wrongdoing, specifically, that “things could be different IF,” that keeps such poetry from being entirely despairing. The protest at inhumane conditions suggests a hope that human beings might treat each other better, and this hope makes such poetry more universally attractive than the poetry of despair which offers no such hope.

I contend, however, that the three poems that I discuss in this essay, which I think of as poems of quiet despair, may also serve as vehicles of compassion. Such poems, perhaps even more than the poems previously mentioned, validate the “shadow” side of our feelings, the side that we fear to share with others for fear of alienation. Many of us, like Thomas Lovell Beddoes’ narrator in "The Brides’ Tragedy," have feared for our personal sanity at some point. Similarly, many of us, like James Thomson’s narrator in “The City of Dreadful Night,” have experienced a wrenching loss of faith in “God,” whether this was temporary or permanent. And it is difficult for this writer to imagine being a thoughtful reader in the 21st century without having, however briefly, experienced life as “absurd,” or empty and meaningless, especially in the grip of grief, as Weldon Kees’ narrator does in “Early Winter.”

That people experience these dreadful mental states is a given. The psychological question is, how comfortable do they feel about sharing them? Despite the parade of psychotropic medications across every tv screen, and the fact that it is now more or less understood, moreso than in previous decades, that it is “okay” to go to therapy, in my experience many, if not most, people still deeply fear sharing the feelings mentioned above due to a fear of alienation. And this is not simply an irrational fear. For example, although I am, professionally, a therapist, I work in corporate America. If I were to go into work tomorrow and begin freely expressing fears regarding any of the subjects mentioned above, I would expect to be looked upon with concern about whether or not I would be able to continue to function at my job. I am not critiquing that fact; that is simply the culture in which I live. But in such a culture, the poetry of quiet despair may be recognized as all the more vital in that such poetry offers affirmation to readers who may not find it anywhere else. If readers seek this poetry out, they may find connections and realize that other people do, in fact, share their grief and terrors, and may, hence, find some comfort in knowing, at least, that they are not alone. In providing such comfort, such poetry may serve a compassionate, connecting function for readers.

Perhaps no other poet of the Romantic Period speaks as directly to the shadow side of human nature as Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Much of Beddoes’ finest poetry may be found in his closet dramas, the first being "The Brides’ Tragedy." In this play, the protagonist, Hesperus, is terrified of going homicidally insane, a frequent motif in Beddoes’ work. In the following passage, Hesperus literally addresses his shadow as the evil part of himself that he fears:

[He turns, and addresses his shadow]
I know thee now,
I know the hideous laughter of thy face.
‘Tis Malice’ eldest imp, the heir of hell,
Red-handed Murther. Slow it whispers me,
Coaxingly with its serpent voice. Well sung,
Syrens of Acheron!
I’ll not look on thee;
Why does thy frantic weapon dig the air
With such frightful vehemence? Back, back,
Tell the dark grave I will not give it food.
(Act II, Scene IV, 55-63)

It is remarkable, on the one hand, that Beddoes wrote this in 1822, more than half a century before psychoanalysis came into prominence. What I find more remarkable, however, is the way that the poet draws out the readers’ identification with a character who is clearly wrestling with homicidal thoughts. By having Hesperus address his shadow as an “other,” and refer to it by numerous hideous names, such as “Malice,” “heir of hell,” and, most tellingly, “Red-handed Murther,” Beddoes positions Hesperus, for a moment, not as a potential murderer from whom to recoil, but rather as a man suffering from a terrible affliction.

And such he is. While there is certainly no time in this brief essay to present an entire argument that Hesperus is suffering from schizophrenia or an extreme dissociative disorder, there is ample evidence for this in the text. For example, immediately before the lines quoted above come the following lines:

[Grasps his dagger convulsively]
Who placed this iron aspic in my hand?
Speak! who is at my ear?
(Act III, Scene IV, 53-54)

This passage suggests that Hesperus is acting without knowing what he is doing, and also that he is hearing voices. Thus, a reader with an understanding of severe mental illness may see, in Hesperus, a character more to be pitied than feared, when he utters “Why does thy frantic weapon dig the air / With such frightful vehemence?” In another context, this might be comical, as it is Hesperus who is standing and stabbing the air with a dagger that he, himself, grasped, while he is addressing no one. But in the context of the fear of insanity, Hesperus may be fruitfully viewed with compassion, as he displays not only the characteristics of someone struggling with psychosis and/or dissociation, but also terror and the rejection of his condition. On the other hand, in terms of the compassion that this passage may offer readers, at the most basic level, any who have ever struggled with fears of insanity, or with thoughts that they felt were too disturbing to be their own, may find in this passage a mirror validating their struggles. More specifically, for readers who have ever struggled with psychotic or dissociative disorders, regardless of whether they involved homicidal urges, this passage could be a welcome reflection of what tend to otherwise be very isolating conditions.

James Thomson (B.V.), especially in his best known poem “The City of Dreadful Night,” writes in a tone of despair as intense, but more subdued, than Beddoes.’ Thomson, like Beddoes, was ahead of his time, in that, in 1874, he published his poem envisioning London as a wasteland. One of the strongest themes in Thomson’s poem is the loss of faith in God, and the psychological consequences of this. In the passage that follows, the narrator of the story is sitting with a congregation in the ruins of a church when a “shrill and lamentable cry” (6) pierces the air with the following:

The man speaks sooth, alas! The man speaks sooth:
We have no personal life beyond the grave;
There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:
Can I find here the comfort which I crave?
…….
My wine of life is poison mixed with gall,
My noonday passes in a nightmare dream,
I worse than lose the years which are my all:
What can console me for the loss supreme?

Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,
Speak not at all; can words make foul things fair?
Our life’s a cheat, our death a black abyss;
Hush and be mute envisaging despair.--
(XVI, 7-10, 35-42)

The first quatrain above reveals a man who is first admitting to his loss of faith, and who is at the same time realizing the implications of this and grasping at any sort of comfort that might steady him in a world that has suddenly begun spinning. The repetition of “The man speaks sooth,” combined with the exclaimed “alas!” show the man’s alarmed state of mind. He then lists the three truths that go together in his realization of his loss of faith: our personal life ends at death; there is no God; and fate is, to use Hardy’s phrase, “Hap,” or hapless, caring nothing for people. Looking at these three new truths, he asks if he can find any comfort here?

Twenty-five lines later we find the reply: nothing can console him for the “loss supreme,” and what should be his “wine of life” is “poison mixed with gall.” The man is so bitter at the loss of his faith, in fact, that he even curses words in his line “Speak not at all; can words make foul things fair?” and exhorts the congregation “Hush and be mute envisaging despair.” One might find it difficult to imagine readers finding compassion in this wrenching passage, and yet it is within the center of the hopelessness of it that compassion, or connection, lies for readers who have struggled terribly with faith and ultimately felt it slip away. It is to such readers that this poem is chiefly addressed, and for the very purpose outlined in this essay, offering solace as a fellow sufferer. As Thomson himself says in the intro to the poem:

"Yes, here and there some weary wanderer
In that same city of tremendous night,
Will understand the speech and feel a stir
Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight;
'I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother
Travels the same wild paths though out of sight.'”

Moving into the twentieth century, we find, in Weldon Kees’ “Early Winter,” a narrator whose world has been stripped of illusions of warmth and expected answers and been revealed, instead, as absurd, or empty and meaningless. The poem deserves quotation in its entirety:

Early Winter

Memory of summer is winter’s consciousness.
Sitting or walking or merely standing still,
Earning a living or watching the snow fall,
I am remembering the sun on sidewalks in a warmer place,
A small hotel and a dead girl’s face,
I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.

But the room is cold, the words in the books are cold,
And the question of whether we get what we ask for
Is absurd, unanswered by the sound of an unlatched door
Rattling in wind, or the sound of snow on roofs, or glare
Of the winter sun. What we have learned is not what we were told.
I watch the snow, feel for the heartbeat that is not there.

Kees sets the reader up to feel a sense of normality in lines 1-4, with lines simply describing the narrator’s actions and memories. But then, in lines 5 and 6, the absurd creeps into the simple memories:

A small hotel and a dead girl’s face,
I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.

What makes these lines particularly disturbing and absurd is that the narrator mentions “a dead girl’s face” as simply the last image that he remembers in a catalogue including “the sun on sidewalks in a warmer place” and “(a) small hotel,” then returns to his musings, stating “I think of these in this higher altitude, staring West.”

This reader’s first thought is, what is wrong with the narrator? Why is he so disconnected to the dead girl whom he mentioned? The second stanza offers some clarification, but leaves much ambiguous. The narrator’s internal world, like the external world of snow, is “cold,” and he has found that “the question of whether we get what we ask for / Is absurd, unanswered” by the various sounds around him. Based on the numbness and questioning of the narrator, I am deducing that the narrator was with a girl, but somehow she died, and he is still alone and questioning why. Therefore, like so many people stricken with grief, the narrator feels numb and alone in an absurd world, his primary truth being the ominous “What we have learned is not what we were told.” Our last image of the narrator is of him watching the snow, feeling “for the heartbeat that is not there,” i.e. of the "dead girl.” It is not difficult to see how this poem, understood in this way, could be a poem of compassion for anyone suffering from grief over the death of a loved one. Suddenly, the old platitudes that others have offered ring hollow, and, in the face of a loved one’s tombstone, the question of whether we get what we ask for isn’t even a real question anymore, but a grim absurdity. While very little can be said to comfort people in such states, works of art that reveal to them someone else going through the same numbness and horror may provide them a sense of community, and perhaps a hope that others like them have persevered.

I have always found poetry of quiet despair to be compassionate and healing. I deliberately chose three poets in this essay whose work, while not entirely ignored, is certainly “off to the side” of the literary canon. My hope is that this essay may pique some readers’ interest in one or more of these poets and/or cause someone to think about these poems in a different way. Poetry, even at its most despairing, is still a reaching out to others, and poets of quiet despair offer aesthetic and emotional treasures that may include healing.

[Marybeth Rua-Larsen]

Hello Jeff,

I've been quite moved by the poems of yours that I've read here, and I've listened to, and been moved by, your podcast as well. I look forward to reading your essay above after "dance recital madness" with my daughters ends tomorrow evening. The essay looks very informative, and it's a subject I have quite a bit of interest in. I know you're just getting started, and I don't want to be rude, but I am dismayed that all the poets targeted for discussion are, unless my brief research is wrong (and I hope to be corrected if it is) white men -- Mehigan, Larkin, Kees, Beddoes and Thomson. No doubt they are wonderful and have much to offer on the subject, but surely there must be some women writers and/or writers from other cultures who show equal compassion in their writing of quiet desperation. I don't believe white men have cornered the market on that. I hope to hear about, or at the very least have named, some women writers and writers from various cultures, races and ethnicities who fit the subject being addressed. I realize it's a big world and we can't all be experts in every aspect of it, but I do hope we continue trying. Certainly that's information I'm interested to know, and I doubt I'm alone.

[RCL]

I'm reminded of Thoreau's poetic prose on this topic. I'm not sure, though, that it's compassionate:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Ralph

[Mary Meriam]

I think Charlotte Mew is a poet of quiet despair with compassion.

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks to this, I've been reading Mew again. She gets better and better. Here's a poem of quiet despair:


May 1915

Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods, where the wounded trees
Wait with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,
Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,
Sure of the sun, and even as to these
Surely the Spring, when God shall please,
Will come again like a divine surprise
To those who sit today with their great Dead, hands in their hands, eyes in their eyes
At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things and changing skies.

[Jeff Holt]

Thanks Marybeth, Mary, Alicia, and Tim for pointing out the lack of variety in my choice of poets for discussion, and for beginning to remedy it. This was something that I was aware of, but thought--and rightly so, obviously!--that others could help me out with it. I was not even aware of Charlotte Mew, and found her poetry instantly engaging. I have always loved Emily Dickinson, and, as I mention in my interview, her poem "Much madness is divinest sense" was the first poem that I voluntarily memorized. And thank you, Alicia, for reminding me of that sonnet by Browning.

It is true that I have historically been drawn, more, to white, male poets, probably because I am one, but that certainly doesn't mean that this discussion should focus primarily on them. Furthermore, as Tim pointed out, Rhina Espaillat, who is a dear friend of mine--actually, I consider her my "poetry mother"--has such a breadth of style in her writing, that, like Richard Wilbur, she can write from the very joyful to the very brooding, and I love her work. And as Alicia pointed out, we are focusing on poems, not poets, of quiet despair.

All in all, I would say that this thread is off to a wonderful start. And Roger, I absolutely agree with you that the very act of putting words on paper is an act of reaching out, an act of "compassion" in the sense of connection that I am using the word, and at odds with pure, solitary despair.

Tim, I need to take a closer look at your take on "Fern Hill," as well as your individual poems. I have been caught up with family life since I last posted.

Cheers!

[Tim Murphy]

Charlotte Mew is an unjustly neglected and tragic figure. I was introduced to her work by a 98 year old gentleman in his house beside the Delaware. He had been a famous transvestite in the 'Thirties, had made a number of films with his friends which are now properly archived. And I sat at his feet and heard his reedy old voice reading Mew from his first edition. I think she has been unfairly criticized for being derivative of Hardy, and certainly she was of his era and milieu, but she is an absolute original. Here is a link to a Mastery Thread Mary initiated in 2007: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...w%2C+Ma stery

I eventually learned that all my seniors in the art knew her very well and revered her memory.