[Alan Sullivan]

Because we have been talking about Blake (at times) I decided to post this poem which makes much play with Blake's manner and method.

The Australian poet, A. D. Hope, recently reached the end of his long and colorful life. He has left a varied and profound body of work: criticism, letters, drama, and several volumes of verse. He despised vers libre and prematurely pronounced it dead in 1957.

This poem is atypically short for Hope, which makes it convenient for posting. In another respect, however, this poem is quite characteristic. Hope often toyed with mimesis, and he favored Eighteenth Century voices, though he could do a mean Auden as well. Mimesis is a topic that has always intrigued me. It transcends mere parody, a skill that any apprentice should master. True mimesis, I believe, is only possible for a poet who already has found or formed an individual voice.

The Watcher

Can the tree that grows in grief
Rooted in its own despair
Crown its head with bud and leaf,
Blossom and enrich the air?

Can the bird that on the bough
Tries the ripeness of the fruit,
Taste the agony below,
Know the worm that cuts the root?

In a dream I saw my tree
Clothed in paradisal white,
Every branch in ecstasy
Spread its odors on the night;

Lovers walking two by two
Felt their own delight expressed,
And the bird that thither flew
Chose its branches for her nest;

Childred in a laughing tide
Thronged it round to taste and see:
"See the shining fruit," they cried,
"See the happy, blossoming tree!"

You along among them there
Came with your divining heart,
Breathed that still, enchanted air,
Felt your tears in anguish start,

And the passion of your woe
At the sweetness of the fruit
Watered all the ground below,
Touched and healed the wounded root.

Then the bird among the leaves
Checked its song in sad surmise;
Then the lover saw what grieves
In the depth of human eyes;

But the children at your side
Took your hands and laughed to see
"O the shining fruit," they cried.
"O the happy, happy tree!"

Alec Derwent Hope




[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 11-14-2000).]

[Richard Wakefield]

Having read only the much-anthologized standards by Blake, I don't have a strong opinion on this poem's success as an imitation. My weak opinion is that it comes very close. The heavy allegory, the tight construction, the rather orphic tone all sound right. The only feature that doesn't sound like Blake -- to my ear -- is the comparatively fluid syntax; these are mostly rather natural sounding sentences, downright idiomatic, and so some of the prophetic weight of Blake's poetry doesn't come through.
Richard

[Josh Hill]

Alan,

I enjoy mimetic exercises myself, as practice and humor. But more serious attempts at mimicry carry with them the risk that they will be compared with the original, and, since few poets choose to imitate the mediocre, found wanting. So I have to confess that I didn't much like this; it reads as if my favorite Blake had been shaken up in a tumbler and poured out again.

From a stylistic perspective this has an overlay of romantic regularity that is very un-Blakean.

It's nice enough, but the spirit is gone, the genius lacking.

Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which,
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.

Josh

[This message has been edited by Josh Hill (edited 11-14-2000).]

[Kate Benedict]

For my money, I'll take Hopkins' Spring and Fall (much discussed in the Hopkins topic) over this one!

The theme of Hope's poem strikes me as, well, corny. If he was going to be mimetic, I would have found it more interesting if he adopted Blake's cadences but used them to explore a more up-to-date theme, something a contemporary reader could relate to.

Here we have a fantasy that a tree experiences grief, indeed an "agony at the root," and that human tears filter down to the weeping root (if only in a dream) and heal the tree. And then, those happy children singing their song of innocence at the end! There's enough sweetness here to give Pollyanna a toothache.

But read all that knowing that my own preference is for darker work. Otherwise I have to wear shades:

[Alan Sullivan]

OK, Josh, don't leave us hanging. What are you up to with that ending?

Also I don't quite understand your observation about regularity, since Blake is often very regular, especially in the Songs of Innocence and Experience, upon which this poem is modelled. Consider our discussion of "A Poison Tree" on an adjoining thread.

Kate, I think you underestimate the irony in Hope's work...this poem depicts a poisoned (if not a poison) tree, and is more akin to the songs of experience than innocence.

Here is another Hope poem which aptly illustrates the point:

Imperial Adam

Imperial Adam, naked in the dew,
Felt his brown flanks and found the rib was gone
Puzzled he turned and saw where, two by two,
The mighty spoor of Jahweh marked the lawn.

Then he remembered the mysterious sleep,
The surgeon fingers probing at the bone,
The voice so far away, so rich and deep:
"It is not good for him to live alone."

Turing once more, he found Man's counterpart
In tender parody breathing at his side.
He knew her at first sight, he knew by heart
Her allegory of sense unsatisfied.

The pawpaw drooped its golden breasts above
Less generous than the honey of her flesh;
The innocent sunlight showed the place of love;
The dew on its dark hairs winked crisp and fresh.

This plump gourd severed from his virile root
She promised on the turf of Paradise
Delicious pulp of the forbidden fruit;
Sly as the snake she loosed her sinuous thighs,

And waking, smiled up at him from the grass;
Her breasts rose softly and he heard her sigh.
From all the beasts whose pleasant task it was
In Eden to increase and multiply

Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind:
Her took her in his arms and there and then,
Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind,
Began in joy to found the breed of men.

Then from the spurt of seed within her broke
Her terrible and triumphant female cry,
Split upward by the sexual lightning stroke.
It was the beasts now who stood watching by:

The gravid elephant, the calving hind,
The breeding bitch, the she-ape big with young
Were the first gentle midwives of mankind;
The teeming lioness rasped her with her tongue;

The proud vicuna nuzzled her as she slept
Lax on the grass; and Adam watching too
Saw how her dumb breasts at their ripening wept,
The great pod of her belly swelled and grew,

And saw its water break, and saw, in fear,
Its quaking muscles in the act of birth,
Between her legs a pigmy face appear,
And the first murderer lay upon the earth.

---A. D. Hope



[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 11-15-2000).]

[Kate Benedict]

The tree is poisoned? Where do you get that? I took those worms at face value, and figured the roots of the tree were infested somehow. Whatever is wrong with that tree, trust me--it isn't grieving. To say so isn't irony to my eye, it's a silly anthropomorphism.

But, y'know, Hope set out to do something in this poem and he did it. That's undeniable.

"Imperial Adam" knocks my socks off. Such powerful imagery. What point did you mean it to illustrate?



------------------
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Ciao for now,
Kate

[Alan Sullivan]

I believe "The Watcher" is a very personal allegory of the poet's state as a single man, before he met his wife, Penelope. He felt himself at root to be peculiar and isolated, even disfigured, hence the worm. Read the poem through with this thought in mind, and perhaps you will see it in a different way.

I posted "Imperial Adam" to illustrate that Hope is not the naif you might take him to be, if you read "The Watcher" too literally.

Alan Sullivan

[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 11-15-2000).]

[Kate Benedict]

I'd argue I was not reading the first poem "literally," but never mind. I'm glad you posted "Imperial Adam" and I will definitely be reading more of Hope.

Shall we be devilish and subject this master to the workshop treatment? Are the following phrases in "Imperial Adam" above critique?

Imperial Adam, naked in the dew,
Felt his brown flanks and found the rib was gone
Puzzled he turned and saw where, two by two,
The mighty spoor of Jahweh marked the lawn.

[I'd vote for "touched" over "felt" and suggest
that that "mighty spoor of Jahweh" just might be over-the-top.]

Then he remembered the mysterious sleep,
The surgeon fingers probing at the bone,
The voice so far away, so rich and deep:
"It is not good for him to live alone."

[The concept of "surgeon" would have been unknown to the first human being, who is doing the remembering here. Should that matter? Should "surgeon" be used as an adjective? Discuss among yourselves!]

Turning once more, he found Man's counterpart
In tender parody breathing at his side.
He knew her at first sight, he knew by heart
Her allegory of sense unsatisfied.

[Great stuff. As a female, I take a just a little umbrage at the idea of Eve's being the parody of the first male, however tender. Would not a more concrete word than "allegory" be better here as well? I know Adam was naming animals and all, but I doubt if he was making up allegories or thinking in those terms. Art comes after the fall.]

The pawpaw drooped its golden breasts above
Less generous than the honey of her flesh;
The innocent sunlight showed the place of love;
The dew on its dark hairs winked crisp and fresh.

[Uh, oh. The pawpaw tree has breasts. A Joyce Kilmerism.]

This plump gourd severed from his virile root
She promised on the turf of Paradise
Delicious pulp of the forbidden fruit;
Sly as the snake she loosed her sinuous thighs,

[If someone here rhymed "Paradise" with "thighs"--Caleb, for instance--you can bet there would be quite an outcry. As there would for Hope's many 11-syllable lines. Is there something wrong with the way the first stanza has been typed? It seems to be hanging there, ungrammatically.]

And waking, smiled up at him from the grass;
Her breasts rose softly and he heard her sigh.
From all the beasts whose pleasant task it was
In Eden to increase and multiply

Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind:
He took her in his arms and there and then,
Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind,
Began in joy to found the breed of men.

[Enjambment between the stanzas! But I like enjambment. Sex as a "jolly deed"? Veddy good, sir, now shall I wash your dick for you? Do animals perform deeds?]

Then from the spurt of seed within her broke
Her terrible and triumphant female cry,
Split upward by the sexual lightning stroke.
It was the beasts now who stood watching by:

[Lose the "and" in L2; use a comma instead. How is it that her cry emanates from his spurt? Hot news, guys: the female orgasm doesn't depend on your spurt. Not sure about that "lightning stroke" image. Love the last line of the stanza.]

The gravid elephant, the calving hind,
The breeding bitch, the she-ape big with young
Were the first gentle midwives of mankind;
The teeming lioness rasped her with her tongue;

[Evocative, yes. The beasts teaching the human woman how to give birth. I hope she didn't lift the babe up by the nape with her mouth, though.]

The proud vicuna nuzzled her as she slept
Lax on the grass; and Adam watching too
Saw how her dumb breasts at their ripening wept,
The great pod of her belly swelled and grew,

[Hey, look, knucklehead, Eve's breasts ain't dumb!]

And saw its water break, and saw, in fear,
Its quaking muscles in the act of birth,
Between her legs a pigmy face appear,
And the first murderer lay upon the earth.

[Whoa! Here's the sock-knocking-off part. I love the word "pigmy" though it does make one wonder if a word used primarily to describe a phenotype of human that would come later in history belongs in Eden, or east of it. I'd vote for keeping it anyway. "Pigmy" also means small and elfin, and here it connotes "evilly elfin."]

Have I been evilly critical? If anything, I wanted to give some hope to the victims of workshop critiques. Here is a celebrated poet, who wrote a vastly interesting, "masterly" poem -- and yet imperfections can be found.

[This message has been edited by Kate Benedict (edited 11-17-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Kate Benedict (edited 11-17-2000).]

[Len Krisak]

Kate, I believe Hope elides a lot.

(Of course, Palm also Springs eternal, but that's another matter!)

[Caleb Murdock]

Len, your comment that Hope elides a lot is apparently in response to Kate's mention of Hope's 11-syllable lines. I hope you are not suggesting that there is something wrong with extra syllables. Is this a new rule that I've missed? Robert Frost, for one, threw many anapests into his later work to give it a more relaxed, conversational feel -- take a look at "Mowing". I've seen lines of iambic pentameter that stretched to 13 or 14 syllables.

Furthermore, you can't assume that elisions are there unless they are indicated by the author.