What’s your statue?

Billy Collins writes about what his own and others’ memorial statues might look like. The speaker in “Statues in the Park” views an “equestrian” statue and thinks of someone who taught him the symbolism of such works: a horse rearing up, two legs raised meant that the rider had died in battle and so on.

From there his thoughts wander to the more common sort who live ignoble or seemingly featureless lives of pain or grief, unremarkable uses for replication in statues in parks. Naturally he thinks of his own statue — himself on his knees,  eyes uplifted in prayer, simply begging for another day.

Collins’s 2005 collection The Trouble with Poetry is a fitting read for April (National Poetry Month) since Collins has done so much for the repopularization of poetry.  When he served as American Poet Laureate in 2001, he began the Poetry 180 project, which engaged students and others in a hip, thoughtful website which archives his work and the work of other poets, mainly comtemporary.

Take a look at the table of contents of all 180 poems on this Library of Congress sponsored site for some time well spent with some gifted, but less (or never) frequently anthologized poets. And you might enjoy seeing and hearing Billy Collins read “Litany” on You Tube along with a bit of commentary. Search around for other readings. Charming.

How do I love thee? — not like that!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a talented poet (Sonnets from the Portuguese), but her best known poem, the sonnet “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” is not her best. I suspect it’s her most popular because of — let me count the ways 1. familiarity and 2. conventionality.  Here it is. It also appears in cross-stitching kits and greeting cards. It may be why, early on, some students learn to dislike poetry.

Most poets try their hand at writing a love poem.  Some describe love in the traditional vein employing flowery sentimentality. Nothing wrong with that. But some offer an unexpected, more realistic view of love, as in, for example, Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My Mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun.” It gets its own post. 

John Frederick Nims’s modern poem “Love Poem” is about love, but it’s not the conventional Disney “it could happen to you,” hearts-and-flowers take that has, let’s face it, led to disillusionment for more than a few.

From the beginning Nims applies deprecating terms to his beloved calling her his “clumsiest dear,” who basically wrecks whatever fine things  (glass, linen,) she touches. Then he compliments her with, not a declaration of her beauty, but with her humanity, her care for less-fortunate people, drunks and refugees.

Cataloging her faults, the speaker says that his beloved is careless, unpredictable, and a nuisance to “taxi drivers,” those just going about their business, and then confesses that her real expertise lies in words, people, love, and wit — these he knows are superior traits which keep him and those who know her devotedly at her knees.

Despite the coffee stain on his “flannel,” the lipstick on his coat, and the “spilt bourbon” that symbolizes her tendency toward mishap, he characterizes their relationship as glorious in their “unbreakable heaven,” a place safe even from her.

In the last stanza in an image of delf-denial, he volunteers to study “wry music” to please her. And then in what I think is one of the most memorable images in all poetry, he says that should her “hands drop white and empty/ All the toys of the world break.” Toys symbolize the fun, joie de vivre — the loss that her death and her absence from his life would mean.

Nims’s lover has a realistic view, but it is arguably just as passionate as the conventional, “romantic” view — indeed, more so because it allows for faults and doesn’t expect conformity to a manufactured image.

The last stanza

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

Millay’s Figs

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote two short poems, “First Fig” and “Second Fig,” which are both often quoted as was the case of “First Fig” by Heath Ledger’s father on the death of his son.

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light. 

The poem is little more than applying a cliche to the carpe diem theme. Most interesting is the speaker’s addressing both her foes and her friends. Why must her enemies know of the frenetic but exhilarating “lovely light,” her life’s burning up? So that they will envy her, living well being the most delicious revenge.

What about her friends? They have played a part in her passion play, and she tells them that it’s okay – that a short but sweet life has been “lovely.” No regrets.

Somewhere along the way emotional and psychological “burnout” has become fashionable – even sought after. The brief, spent, wasted lives of celebrities are romanticized. Audiences, friends and foes, can’t get their fill of the “lovely life.” Millay knew this having lived allegedly as a promiscuous bisexual in an era when such behaviors were kept private. Two lengthy biographies of the poet, born in 1892, were published a couple of years ago.

Also from her A Few Figs From Thistles (1922) collection is “Second Fig,” a darker poem taking its imagery from an allusion to Jesus’ parable of the wise man who, able to plan ahead and arm himself against trouble, builds his “house” or life on a solid foundation, the rock. He is contrasted to the foolish man, who builds upon the infirm, shifting sand.

Here’s Millay’s take”

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! 

The speaker is clearly familiar with and even understands the parable’s lesson, but shuns it in favor of the flash of her “shining palace” while fully knowing its instability and hence its danger. And as in First Fig, she involves others: “Come and see,” she beckons. This is the darker side of the carpe diem philosophy.