Monthly Archives: November 2011

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FRESH LOOKS: James Wright’s “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”

30 November 2011

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First, the poem:

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

It’s heightened attention to the NFL this year that brought a very vague memory of this poem to mind, I think; as a piece, its overuse of abstract nouns makes for melodrama, as does its tendency to typify a crew of one-dimensional characters. More importantly, though, a few of the images that Wright crafts have both truth and power, and these color his overarching hyperbole, creating a scene that is so desperate in its pulsing neon that its plug nearly cries to be pulled.

I admit ignorance as to why Wright’s ‘[P]roud fathers are ashamed to go home’—perhaps the mechanism of their work, as stirred by the first stanza, is explanation; perhaps their hearts are with their sons on the field, having themselves passed out of ‘play.’ In any event, the visual of ‘Their women cluck[ing] like starved pullets’ is dead-on. From the front step to the driveway, this is the verifiable sound of the voice that wants to the ear that half-cares. ‘Pullets’ is a brilliant choice to this end: beyond setting the women at a certain age, it visually cues their thin, drawn-out, ‘pulled’ call. The ammo of this image almost rescues the broad (and therefore too vague) ‘[d]ying for love.’

It’s tough not to marvel at the gutsy ‘[t]herefore’ adverbial connector following: the fact that Wright sees a consequent connection between the menagerie of flash personages in the first eight lines and the scene in the final four speaks to his compelling imagination. So the boys’ beauty (are they so beautiful that an onlooker is drawn to kill himself? or is it beauty who wants to off herself, being bodied?) becomes the result of a love that is taciturn in father, desperate in mother, and this is a call to ‘[G]allop terribly against each others bodies.’ In terms of purity of metaphorical relation, I’m hard-pressed to find something more accurate than this description of how a tackle and end meet at the line, without real hope for advancement, one bucking north, the other south. Wright’s moments of inspired descriptive accuracy mean that—while I continue to question parts of his method—his poetic in “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” feels utterly achieved. So what if I don’t  like a wash of abstract nouns?

Thinking of football’s recent issues, from Mr. Paterno to Suh on 11/24 (by the way, check out Jeff MacGregor’s thoughtful piece on football violence here), there’s little doubt that aggression, metered anger, and denial play a part in our interest in footballing. Wright’s piece colors that contact, again, by lending lens to the urge to pummel what we would embrace.

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POEM: Walt Whitman’s [When I heard the learn'd astronomer;]

19 November 2011

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[When I heard the learn'd astronomer;]

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
     lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

—Walt Whitman

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William Wenthe’s “Bitter Lake”

4 November 2011

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In recent months, only Malachi Black’s LAUDS has struck me with as much force as William Wenthe’s “Bitter Lake”; patency of image combined with serious cogitation turn these relatively direct pieces into moveable tunnels.

‘But for’ is such an interesting phrase to open with, isn’t it?—we’re immediately set into a suspended space that waits for a clause to situate us, and the phrase reads as ‘save for,’ ‘excepting,’ and ‘in spite of’ at once, so that the speaker seems to have taken into account human frailty in the face of wilderness, simple desire for escape, and all the telegraph inherent in ‘gestures’ at once. In terms of this ‘oblong of mercy sliced/from the map[,]‘ I’m brought back to—where else—a moment in Silent Hill 2, and a track titled “End of Small Sanctuary.” In that case, all the static of approaching enemies was put aside; all the harried pin-point turns and beasts made to outmatch your crude weaponry could be forgot, and you had a room, a soundtrack, time enough to grab a glass of water.

That reflection made me say to Wenthe: ‘True, I wanted refuge.’ And without it, back in the world of the poem, I say again to him: ‘true.’

Yet the rocked and real stunning power of “Bitter Lake” is in this sudden Lear/Cordelia image, which approaches from a complete blind spot. After consideration, I think the metaphors he chooses—a ‘host’ of geese and accompanying water—are such an unusual stand-in for the king and his good daughter that a reader is torn—really torn—from Wenthe’s implicit comparison between man’s desire for refuge and the refuge Cordelia found in Lear’s arms. Therefore an entire reconstruction of the 12-line poem becomes necessary before we accomplish any perspective. I’ve sat here and shook head for more than a few moments.

Valéry’s assertion about Poetry’s marriage to exact replication of the poet’s language comes to mind.

I’ve already started to re-read King Lear, with this piece as motivation. I am given a dark satisfaction thinking of Cordelia and Lear as ‘bitter,’ Mr. Wenthe.