More Poetry

Yes, yes, I’m two days late, even taking into account the fact that I pushed poetry day back to Tuesday. No excuses for such tardiness are acceptable, which is just as well, as none are forthcoming.

My appetite whetted by reading some of their poems in anthologies, next on my list of poets to read are Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, two American poets of the middle century. I’ve scouted copies of their books in Dublin bookshops, but have yet to buy, as I find buying a book when you still have plenty to read at home is a sure-fire way to make sure you’ll never read it: by the time you finish the what you’re already in the middle of, the newness has worn off, and you end up back in the bookshop, because something else has taken your interest. Nonetheless, I feel certain that Bishop’s work is something I’ll have toread more of, not least because of the brilliant control and technique displayed in this poem, “At the Fish-houses???

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

This poem is about a poet repeatedly going to the brink of magic or surrealism, then pulling back, before finally taking glorious flight. Beginning with an almost oppressively mundane scene at the fish-houses, the poet begins to sprinkle silver on the scene. The sea becomes sentient “swelling slowly as if considering spilling over??? and the moss acquires an unearthly glow. Then the pendulum swings back towards the ordinary, with the silver announced to be simply the scales of fish, though the “iridescence??? of the flies, and the ingenious metaphor and rhyme of “mail??? and “scale??? allows a further drip of magic to enter the scene. The poet smokes a cigarette with the old man, talking of “the decline in the population and of codfish and herring???, very much back in the real world again. But again, the silver seeps through, the scales, a moment ago the mere scrapings from fish, now become sequins. Again, she backs away from the hallucinogenic vision, and back to reality, where silver is merely grey. Out by the sea, she sings to a seal, (subject of a strange joking reference to Baptism) building towards her final take-off, but backs off one final time, as if not quite prepared, in the ellipsis before the lines “Back, behind us, the dignified tall firs begin???.

Now Bishop appears to be ready to plunge fully into the vision which has tantalised her since she first approached the fish-houses. The turbulence, the strange native energy of the sea is dramatised by the to-and-fro of the lines “I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world.??? When she plunges into the water, it burns with some strange grey magic, shows itself to be more than mere water. Now she has truly punched through to the other side, where the world is more intense, more essential than that which she has left behind. In this respect, At The Fish-houses is a mystical poem, with poetry, or imagination the key to the otherworldly. The real thrill in the poem, for me, is the earlier part, the promise, through the glimmers of silver amid the grey, of visions to come. The vision, when it comes, is a final surrender to the poetic imagination, one that is all the more powerful for having at first been so conscientiously resisted.