Van Duyn's Influence: Elizabeth Bishop

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.


Sestina


September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house


In this tightly crafted sestina, a brief scene of a grandmother and child illuminates the potential significance of an everyday domestic scene. The repetition of end words ties together the poem, connecting different meanings to each word. For example, the tears of the grandmother are reflected in other things around the house, such as the teacup and the child's drawing. This shows how her tears affect not just herself, but also her granddaughter. Bishop uses everyday images to show this very profound message. Mona Van Duyn did the same thing, taking seemingly simple things and illuminating the hidden complexities within them.

Elizabeth Bishop Biography

Born: February 8, 1911 in Worcester, MA
Father died before her 1st birthday, Mother committed to mental institution when she was 5.
Lived in many different places as she grew up.
Attended Vassar College, where she began to write poetry. She met the poet Marianne Moore there, who later helped her to publish her first poems.
Published her first book, North and South, in 1945.
Won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947, an appointment as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress in 1949, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1950.
Had a relationship with Brazilian native Lota Soares for many years, until Lota's suicide in 1967. 
Died of a brain aneurysm in 1979.
Her poetry is known for its good form and rich, precise imagery.  

Mona Van Duyn Synthesis Post

Mona Van Duyn is a poet revered for her steady voice, realistic yet elegant descriptions, and pioneering efforts in a branch of poetry known as "poetry of the suburbs." The latter is a type of poetry which finds the extraordinary elements contained in everyday occurrences. Hiding beneath seemingly average domestic scenes, Van Duyn's poetry contains much emotion and intensity. James Dickey, an American poety, commented that: "[Van Duyn] is a master … of the exasperated-but-loving, intelligent-housewife tone." Much of her poetry focuses on everyday human relationships, particularly marriage. Her own experience is a very important part of her poetry: "Since I am married, I write about being married," she said, "but if I were in another kind of a relationship, I'd write about that." Van Duyn, like most great poets, has a very sharp eye for her surroundings. However, her no-nonsense style of writing sets her apart from many other poets. In writing about things as they are, she highlights the inherent poetry of everyday things. She does not add unnecessary embellishment, because she feels that the subjects of her poems can stand alone.

Mona Van Duyn reading "Sonnet for Minimalists."

"Moose in the Morning, Northern Maine" (7)

At six a.m. the log cabins
nose an immense cow-pie of mist
that lies on the lake.
Nineteen pale goldfinches perch
side by side on the telephone wire
that runs to shore,
and under them the camp cow,
her bones pointing this way and that,
is collapsed like a badly constructed
pup tent in the dark weeds.
Inside, I am building a fire
in the old woodstove with its rod overhead
for hunters’ clothes to steam on.
I am hunting for nothing—
perhaps the three cold pencils
that lie on the table like kindling
could go in to start the logs.
I remember Ted Weiss saying,
”At the exhibition I suddenly realized
Picasso had to remake everything he laid his eyes on
into an art object.
He couldn’t let the world alone.
Since then I don’t write every morning.”

The world is warming and lightening
and mist on the pond
dissolves into bundles and ribbons.
At the end of my dock there comes clear,
bared by the gentle burning,
a monstrous hulk with thorny head,
up to his chest in the water,
mist wreathing round him.
Grander and grander grows the sun
until he gleams, his brown coat
glistens, the great rack,
five feet wide, throws sparks
of light. A ton of monarch,
munching, he stands spotlit.
Then slowly, gravely, the great neck lowers
head and forty pounds of horn
to sip the lake.
The sun stains the belittled
cow’s hide amber.
She heaves her bones and bag
and her neckbell gongs
as she gets to her feet
in yellow blooms of squaw-weed.
On the telephone wire
all the little golden bells are ringing
as that compulsive old scribbler, the universe,
jots down another day.


This poem is filled with beautiful, vivid imagery of a brief but memorable moment for the speaker. She poses the idea of an artist's burden, which is feeling obligated to record the beauty they encounter. She compares this to the universe, likening it to a "compulsive old scribbler" who "jots down another day." The imagery of the moose is especially vivid. Some descriptive examples are "monstrous hulk with thorny head," "the great rack/five feet wide, throws sparks/of light," and "slowly, gravely, the great neck lowers/ head and forty pounds of horn/to sip the lake." This poem demonstrates how the simplicity of a single event can be profoundly beautiful. 

"The Gentle Snorer" (6)

The Gentle Snorer

When summer came, we locked up our lives and fled to the woods in Maine, and pulled up over our heads a comforter filled with batts of piney dark, tied with crickets' chirretings and the bork of frogs; we hid in a sleep of strangeness from the human humdrum. A pleasant noise the unordered world makes wove around us. Burrowed, we heard the scud of waves, wrack of bending branch, or plop of a fish on his heavy home; the little beasts rummaged the brush. We dimmed to silence, slipped from the angry pull of wishes and will. And then we had a three-week cabin guest who snored; he broke the wilderness of our rest. As all night long he sipped the succulent air, that rhythm we shared made visible to the ear a rich refreshment of the blood. We fed in unison with him. A sound we dreamed and woke to, over the snuff of wind, not loud enough to scare off the roof the early morning chipmunks. Under our skins we heard, as after disease, the bright, thin tick of our time. Sleeping, he mentioned death and celebrated breath. He went back home. The water flapped the shore. A thousand bugs drilled at the darkness. Over the lake a loon howled. Nothing spoke up for us, salvagers always of what we have always lost; and we thought what the night needed was more of man, he left us so partisan.

This poem discusses how the speaker and someone else escape society, only to be reconnected with it in the form of snoring. Van Duyn uses a comforter as a symbol for their wilderness escape: "and pulled up over our heads /a comforter filled with batts of piney dark/tied with crickets' chirretings and the bork /of frogs..." The sounds of nature envelop them in isolation. It removes them from the stress of everyday life, as they are "slipped from the angry pull/of wishes and will." However, when a cabin guest comes for 3 weeks, his snoring brings the two people back to reality. It was just a gentle rhythm that soothed them and reminded them of man's presence on earth. My interpretation is that the speaker wishes humanity would be more in unison with nature, and not have to be so different from one another.

"What the Motorcycle Said" (5)

What The Motorcycle Said

Br-r-ram-m-m, rackety-am-m, OM, Am: All-r-r-room, r-r-ram, ala-bas-ter- Am, the world’s my oyster. I hate plastic, wear it black and slick, hate hardhats, wear one on my head, that’s what the motorcycle said. Passed phonies in Fords, knocked down billboards, landed on the other side of The Gap, and Whee, bypassed history. When I was born (The Past), baby knew best. They shook when I bawled, took Freud’s path, threw away their wrath. R-r-rackety-am-m. Am. War, rhyme, soap, meat, marriage, the Phantom Jet are shit, and like that. Hate pompousness, punishment, patience, am into Love, hate middle-class moneymakers, live on Dad, that’s what the motorcycle said. Br-r-r-am-m-m. It’s Nowsville, man. Passed Oldies, Uglies, Straighties, Honkies. I’ll never be mean, tired, or unsexy. Passed cigarette suckers, souses, mother-fuckers, losers, went back to Nature and found how to get VD, stoned. Passed a cow, too fast to hear her moo, "I rolled our leaves of grass into one ball. I am the grassy All." Br-r-r-am-m-m, rackety-am-m, OM, Am: All-gr-r-rin, oooohgah, gl-l-utton- Am, the world’s my smilebutton.

The tone of this unconventional poem is very arrogant and rebellious. The motorcycle, which could represent any young man with a similar personality, seems to think he knows it all. Yet Van Duyn shows the inconsistencies of his thinking. For example, he says that he hates "middle-class moneymakers," yet he "live(s) on Dad." Even though he acts like he's older, he's still dependent on his father. The "Br-r-r-am-m-m, rackety-am-m, OM, Am" noises are examples of onomatopoeia, meant to make the motorcycle more vivid. I interpret this as maybe likening the man's arrogant statements to the loud, harsh noises a motorcycle makes. However, he choppy sentences give the poem a good rhythm.

"A Kind of Music" (4)

A Kind of Music

Irrelevance characterizes the behavior of our puppy.
In the middle of the night he decides that he wants to play,
runs off when he's called, when petted is liable to pee,
cowers at a twig and barks at his shadow or a tree,
grins at intruders and bites us in the leg suddenly.

No justification we humans have been able to see
applies to his actions. While we go by the time of day,
or the rules, or the notion of purpose or consistency,
he follows from moment to moment a sensuous medley
that keeps him both totally subject and totally free.

I'll have to admit, though, we've never been tempted to say
that he jumps up to greet us or puts his head on our knee
or licks us or lies at our feet irrelevantly.
When it comes to loving, we find ourselves forced to agree
all responses are reasons and no reason is necessary

This poem states that life is random and sometimes irrelevant, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful. She seems to embrace this fact, saying, "When it comes to loving, we find ourselves forced to agree /all responses are reasons and no reason is necessary." The most important things in life, she seems to believe, do not require reasons or explanations. Their simply existing and occurring is what matters the most. 

Woman Waiting (3)

Woman Waiting

Over the gray, massed blunder of her face light hung crudely and apologetic sight crossed in a hurry. Asking very little, her eyes were patiently placed there. Dress loved nothing and wandered away wherever possible, needing its own character. Used to the stories, we wise children made pleasant pictures of her when alive, till someone who knew told us it was never so. Next, wisely waited to see the hidden dancer, the expected flare leaping through that fog of flesh, but no one ever did. In a last wisdom, conceived of a moment love lit her like a star and the star burned out. Interested friends said this had never happened. "Woman Waiting" is about a woman who has a very humble, even unattractive appearance, having a "gray, massed blunder of (a) face." In the second stanza there's a shift, and the reader realizes that this woman is fictional, and that the children hear stories about her.  The woman seems to represent the disillusionment that children face when they grow up and "interested friends" tell them that certain things aren't actually true, like Santa or things like that. There's a few instances of alliteration in this poem: "patiently placed" in line 4, "wisely waited" in line 10, and "the expected flare leaping through that fog/of flesh" in lines 11-12. "love lit her like a star" is a similie. "Dress loved nothing and wondered away/wherever possible, needing its own character" personifies dress.

"Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri." (2)

Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri

The quake last night was nothing personal,
you told me this morning. I think one always wonders,
unless, of course, something is visible: tremors
that take us, private and willy-nilly, are usual.

But the earth said last night that what I feel,
you feel; what secretly moves you, moves me.
One small, sensuous catastrophe
makes inklings letters, spelled in a worldly tremble.

The earth, with others on it, turns in its course
as we turn toward each other, less than ourselves, gross,
mindless, more than we were. Pebbles, we swell
to planets, nearing the universal roll,
in our conceit even comprehending the sun,
whose bright ordeal leaves cool men woebegone.

This poem personifies tremors experienced by the speaker and one other person. This other person feels that tremors are "nothing personal," as if they occur regardless of human life. However, the speaker feels that people are conceited, saying "Pebbles, we swell/to planets, nearing the universal roll,/in our conceit even comprehending the sun." I think the speaker feels the Earth is much more significant than the person she's addressing believes, because we're simply occupants on its surface and the Earth is much more fixed.

There is alliteration in line 7, with "small, sensuous catastrophes." There are also some slant rhymes, such as "course" and "gross," and "sun" and "woebegone."

"A Relative and an Absolute." (1)

A Relative and an Absolute

It has been cool so far for December, but of course the cold doesn't last long down here. The Bible is being fulfilled so rapidly that it looks like it won't be long until Jesus will come in the air, with a shout, and all those who have accepted Jesus as their own personal Saviour will be caught up to meet him and then that terrible war will be on earth. The battle of Armageddon. And all the unsaved people will have to go through the great tribulation. Hope you are both well. Bye. An aunt, my down-to-earth father's sibling, went to stay in Texas, and had to continue by mail, still thanklessly, her spiritual supervision of the family. Texas orchards are fruitful. A card that would portray this fact in green and orange, and even more colorfully say on its back that Doom is nearly upon us, came regularly at birthday, Easter and Christmas--and sometimes between the three. That the days passed, and the years, never bothered her prophecy; she restressed, renewed and remailed its imminence faithfully. Most preaching was wrong, she felt, but found for her kin on Sunday, in one voice on one radio station, one truth for all to obey. Salvation being thus limited, it seemed to me there was something unpleasant about that calm tenacity of belief that so many others would suffer catastrophe at any moment. She seemed too smug a protegee. Otherwise, I rather liked her. Exchanging a recipe or comparing winters with neighbors, she took life quietly in a stuffy bungalow, among doilies of tatting and crochet. She had married late, and enjoyed the chance to baby a husband, to simmer the wholesome vegetables and see that vitamins squeezed from his fruit were drunk without delay. Though she warned of cities and churches and germs, some modesty or decorum, when face to face with us, wouldn't let her convey her vision of Armageddon. But the postcards set it free. It was hovering over the orange groves, she need only lay her sewing aside, and the grandeur and rhythm of its poetry came down and poured in her ear, her pencil moved eloquently. She wrote it and wrote it. She will be "caught up," set free from her clay as Christ comes "with a shout in the air" and trumpeting angels play, and "the terrible war will be on earth" on that Judgment Day, expecting all those years her extinction of body would be attended by every creature, wrapped round in the tragedy of the world, in its pandemonium and ecstasy. When she died last winter, several relatives wrote to say a kidney stone "as big as a peach pit" took her away. Reading the letters, I thought, first of all, of the irony, then, that I myself, though prepared to a certain degree, will undoubtedly feel, when I lie there, as lonesome in death as she and just as surprised at its trivial, domestic imagery.    This poem is about the speaker's relationship with her very religious aunt. She is described as being "down-to-earth,"yet she's always preoccupied with matters of the heavens and being swept up to heaven when Armageddon comes, so that's ironic.  The speaker notices how unsettling it is that her aunt knows the way to salvation, and everyone else is doomed to perish during Judgment Day. But instead of being alone in her salvation, the aunt was alone in her "domestic" death. This poem show's the author's observations that really, no matter what life you lead on Earth, you die just like everyone else.

Mona Van Duyn: Biography

Mona Van Duyn (pronounced Van Dine)
Born: May 9, 1921 in Waterloo, Iowa
Graduated from University of Northern Iowa in 1942
Married Jarvis A. Thurston, whom she met in a writing class, in 1943
Hired as an instructor at the University of Louisville in 1946
Taught at Wash U from 1950 to 1990, when she retired
Died of Bone Cancer in 2004

Works:
First major publication: "Valentines to the Wide World" in 1959.
"A Time of Bees." 1964
"To See, To Take." 1970 (won 1971 National Book Award)
"Bedtime Stories." 1972
"Merciful Disguises." 1973
"Letters from a Father, and Other Poems." 1982
"Near Changes." 1990 (won Pulitzer in 1991)
"Firefall." 1993
"If It Be Not I: Collected Poems, 1959-1982." 1994
Last publication: "Collected Poems." 2002

Some awards:
The Hart Crane Memorial Award in 1968
National Book Award for Poetry in 1971
Bollingen Prize in 1971
A Guggenheim fellowship in 1972
Carl Sandburg Prize of Cornell College in 1982
the Shelley Memorial Prize of the Poetry Society of America in 1987
Ruth Lily Poetry Prize in 1989
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1991
Invited to National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1987
Also a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences

Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate from 1992 to 1993 (first female Laureate)

Awarded Honorary Doctoral Degree of Letters by Washington University, Cornell University, University of Northern Iowa, and the University of the South. 


In Van Duyn's New York Times obituary,  Brian Henry, editor of Verse magazine and University of Georgia creative writing program director, wrote: ""Her poetry is primarily, and literally, civil, seeking to uphold the accepted foundations of civilization - marriage and friendship, love and sympathy - while occasionally plumbing those foundations for cracks."

Tanka poetry: "Fearing" by Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912)

Fearing
What lies in my heart
May be heard
I quickly draw back my chest
From the stethoscope

The literal action of this poem seems to be a man at the doctor's, and he's afraid of having his heart examined by the doctor. However there's definitely a more profound figurative meaning. He does not know the contents of his heart, as in his innermost emotions and thoughts. The stethoscope could represent anyone trying to gain access to his heart, whether it's an individual person, multiple people or society as a whole. To protect himself, he recoils and avoids contact. This means that although he doesn't know everything that lies within, he probably can guess that some of it is dark and painful.

Matsuo Basho

"A Weathered Skeleton" by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife 


Devices:
Similie- "piercing like a knife"
Imagery- "weathered skeleton"


I believe this poem addresses the things that haunt people for their entire lives. The "skeleton" may represent the bad event, person, etc. that persists in one's memory. While it may be "weathered", as many years have passed, it's still "piercing like a knife" in one's mind. Despite the time that has passed, its pain is still acute. The "windy fields of memory" may suggest that one's specific memories may be hazy, but the specific pain associated with something still pierces him from within.

Taylor Mali's "Totally like whatever, you know?

"Totally like whatever, you know?" by Taylor Mali, slam poet.

Comment!

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?
Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?
What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!
And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!
I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Japanese Haiku by Arakida Moritake (1473–1549)

A fallen blossom

returning to the bough, I thought --

But no, a butterfly.

 

 

Though simple, I think this poem's message is profound.  He sees a "fallen blossom", which would be lifeless and simply fluttering into obscurity. He is mistaken, however, and discovers that it's in fact a butterfly. The butterfly directly contrasts from the fallen blossom; it's vibrant and colorful, quite the opposite from anything lifeless. Even though the two things may appear very similar, and a casual observer could confuse them, they in fact possess fundamental differences. I think this poem draws attention to this fact, and leaves the reader with a feeling of optimism.