Poetry for Students ( PDFDrive )

for PStouedtenrtys

National Advisory Board

Susan Allison: Head Librarian, Lewiston High sity of Detroit, 1967 (magna cum laude);
School, Lewiston, Maine. Standards Committee M.L.S., University of Missouri–Columbia, l974.
Chairperson for Maine School Library (MASL) Volunteer Project Leader for a school in rural
Programs. Board member, Julia Adams Morse Jamaica; volunteer with Adult Literacy pro-
Memorial Library, Greene, Maine. Advisor to grams.
Lewiston Public Library Planning Process.
Laurie St. Laurent: Head of Adult and Children’s
Jennifer Hood: Young Adult/Reference Librarian, Services, East Lansing Public Library, East
Cumberland Public Library, Cumberland, Lansing, Michigan, 1994–. M.L.S. from West-
Rhode Island. Certified teacher, Rhode Island. ern Michigan University. Chair of Michigan
Member of the New England Library Associa- Library Association’s 1998 Michigan Summer
tion, Rhode Island Library Association, and the Reading Program; Chair of the Children’s
Rhode Island Educational Media Association. Services Division in 2000–2001; and Vice-
President of the Association in 2002–2003.
Ann Kearney: Head Librarian and Media Spe- Board member of several regional early child-
cialist, Christopher Columbus High School, Mi- hood literacy organizations and member of the
ami, Florida, 1982–2002. Thirty-two years as Library of Michigan Youth Services Advisory
Librarian in various educational institutions Committee.
ranging from grade schools through graduate
programs. Library positions at Miami-Dade Heidi Stohs: Instructor in Language Arts, grades
Community College, the University of Miami’s 10–12, Solomon High School, Solomon,
Medical School Library, and Carrollton School Kansas. Received B.S. from Kansas State Uni-
in Coconut Grove, Florida. B.A. from Univer- versity; M.A. from Fort Hays State University.

for PStouedtenryts

Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on
Commonly Studied Poetr y

Volume 19

David Galens, Project Editor

Foreword by David Kelly

Poetry for Students, Volume 19

Project Editor Research Imaging and Multimedia
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Table of Contents

Guest Foreword

“Just a Few Lines on a Page”
by David J. Kelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Literary Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

And What If I Spoke of Despair
(by Ellen Bass) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Boy
(by Marilyn Hacker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

v

Table of Contents

Childhood Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
(by Rainer Maria Rilke) . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Once Again I Prove the Theory
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 of Relativity
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 (by Sandra Cisneros) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
The Cinnamon Peeler Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
(by Michael Ondaatje) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 On Location in the Loire Valley
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 (by Diane Ackerman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
The City Limits Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
(by A. R. Ammons) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Ordinary Words
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 (by Ruth Stone) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
His Speed and Strength Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
(by Alicia Ostriker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Perfect Light
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 (by Ted Hughes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Ithaka Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
(by C. P. Cavafy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Proem
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 (by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) . . . . . . . . . 205
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

vi Poetry for Students

Table of Contents

Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 somewhere i have never
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 travelled,gladly beyond
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 (by e. e. cummings) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Seven Seeds Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
(by Jill Bialosky) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 True Night
(by Gary Snyder) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Social Life
(by Tony Hoagland) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Author Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Poem Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Poem Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Critical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Cumulative Author/Title Index . . . . . . . . . . 331
Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Subject/Theme Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Cumulative Index of First Lines . . . . . . . . . 351
Cumulative Index of Last Lines . . . . . . . . . 357

Volume 19 vii

Just a Few Lines on a Page

I have often thought that poets have the easi- tually travel to different times and different cul-
est job in the world. A poem, after all, is just a few tures, but the poems get into our minds, they find
lines on a page, usually not even extending margin what little we know about the places they are talk-
to margin—how long would that take to write, ing about, and then they make that little bit blos-
about five minutes? Maybe ten at the most, if you som into a bouquet of someone else’s life. Poets
wanted it to rhyme or have a repeating meter. Why, make us think we are following simple, specific
I could start in the morning and produce a book of events, but then they leave ideas in our heads that
poetry by dinnertime. But we all know that it isn’t cannot be found on the printed page. Abracadabra.
that easy. Anyone can come up with enough words,
but the poet’s job is about writing the right ones. Sometimes when you finish a poem it doesn’t
The right words will change lives, making people feel as if it has left any supernatural effect on you,
see the world somewhat differently than they saw like it did not have any more to say beyond the ac-
it just a few minutes earlier. The right words can tual words that it used. This happens to everybody,
make a reader who relies on the dictionary for but most often to inexperienced readers: regardless
meanings take a greater responsibility for his or her of what is often said about young people’s infinite
own personal understanding. A poem that is put on capacity to be amazed, you have to understand what
the page correctly can bear any amount of analy- usually does happen, and what could have hap-
sis, probing, defining, explaining, and interrogat- pened instead, if you are going to be moved by
ing, and something about it will still feel new the what someone has accomplished. In those cases in
next time you read it. which you finish a poem with a “So what?” atti-
tude, the information provided in Poetry for Stu-
It would be fine with me if I could talk about dents comes in handy. Readers can feel assured that
poetry without using the word “magical,” because the poems included here actually are potent magic,
that word is overused these days to imply “a really not just because a few (or a hundred or ten thou-
good time,” often with a certain sweetness about it, sand) professors of literature say they are: they’re
and a lot of poetry is neither of these. But if you significant because they can withstand close in-
stop and think about magic—whether it brings to spection and still amaze the very same people who
mind sorcery, witchcraft, or bunnies pulled from have just finished taking them apart and seeing how
top hats—it always seems to involve stretching re- they work. Turn them inside out, and they will still
ality to produce a result greater than the sum of its be able to come alive, again and again. Poetry for
parts and pulling unexpected results out of thin air. Students gives readers of any age good practice in
This book provides ample cases where a few sim- feeling the ways poems relate to both the reality of
ple words conjure up whole worlds. We do not ac- the time and place the poet lived in and the reality

ix

Foreword

of our emotions. Practice is just another word for with one hand, while the other hand pulls some sort
being a student. The information given here helps of trick that most of us will never fully understand.
you understand the way to read poetry; what to look I can’t even pack all that I need for a weekend into
for, what to expect. one suitcase, so what would be my chances of stuff-
ing so much life into a few lines? With all that Po-
With all of this in mind, I really don’t think I etry for Students tells us about each poem, I am
would actually like to have a poet’s job at all. There impressed that any poet can finish three or four po-
are too many skills involved, including precision, ems a year. Read the inside stories of these poems,
honesty, taste, courage, linguistics, passion, com- and you won’t be able to approach any poem in the
passion, and the ability to keep all sorts of people same way you did before.
entertained at once. And that is just what they do

David J. Kelly
College of Lake County

x Poetry for Students

Introduction

Purpose of the Book poem. A unique feature of PfS is a specially com-
missioned critical essay on each poem, targeted to-
The purpose of Poetry for Students (PfS) is to ward the student reader.
provide readers with a guide to understanding, en-
joying, and studying poems by giving them easy To further aid the student in studying and en-
access to information about the work. Part of Gale’s joying each poem, information on media adapta-
“For Students” Literature line, PfS is specifically tions is provided (if available), as well as reading
designed to meet the curricular needs of high school suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on
and undergraduate college students and their teach- similar themes and topics. Classroom aids include
ers, as well as the interests of general readers and ideas for research papers and lists of critical sources
researchers considering specific poems. While each that provide additional material on the poem.
volume contains entries on “classic” poems fre-
quently studied in classrooms, there are also entries Selection Criteria
containing hard-to-find information on contempo-
rary poems, including works by multicultural, in- The titles for each volume of PfS were selected
ternational, and women poets. by surveying numerous sources on teaching litera-
ture and analyzing course curricula for various
The information covered in each entry includes school districts. Some of the sources surveyed in-
an introduction to the poem and the poem’s author; cluded: literature anthologies; Reading Lists for
the actual poem text (if possible); a poem summary, College-Bound Students: The Books Most Recom-
to help readers unravel and understand the mean- mended by America’s Top Colleges; textbooks on
ing of the poem; analysis of important themes in teaching the poem; a College Board survey of po-
the poem; and an explanation of important literary ems commonly studied in high schools; and a Na-
techniques and movements as they are demon- tional Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
strated in the poem. survey of poems commonly studied in high schools.

In addition to this material, which helps the Input was also solicited from our advisory
readers analyze the poem itself, students are also board, as well as educators from various areas.
provided with important information on the liter- From these discussions, it was determined that each
ary and historical background informing each volume should have a mix of “classic” poems
work. This includes a historical context essay, a (those works commonly taught in literature classes)
box comparing the time or place the poem was writ- and contemporary poems for which information is
ten to modern Western culture, a critical overview often hard to find. Because of the interest in ex-
essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the panding the canon of literature, an emphasis was

xi

Introduction

also placed on including works by international, of the time in which the work was written. If the
multicultural, and women poets. Our advisory poem is a historical work, information regard-
board members—educational professionals— ing the time in which the poem is set is also in-
helped pare down the list for each volume. If a work cluded. Each section is broken down with
was not selected for the present volume, it was of- helpful subheads.
ten noted as a possibility for a future volume. As
always, the editor welcomes suggestions for titles • Critical Overview: this section provides back-
to be included in future volumes. ground on the critical reputation of the poem,
including bannings or any other public contro-
How Each Entry Is Organized versies surrounding the work. For older works,
this section includes a history of how the poem
Each entry, or chapter, in PfS focuses on one was first received and how perceptions of it may
poem. Each entry heading lists the full name of the have changed over the years; for more recent
poem, the author’s name, and the date of the poems, direct quotes from early reviews may
poem’s publication. The following elements are also be included.
contained in each entry:
• Criticism: an essay commissioned by PfS which
• Introduction: a brief overview of the poem specifically deals with the poem and is written
which provides information about its first ap- specifically for the student audience, as well as
pearance, its literary standing, any controversies excerpts from previously published criticism on
surrounding the work, and major conflicts or the work (if available).
themes within the work.
• Sources: an alphabetical list of critical material
• Author Biography: this section includes basic used in compiling the entry, with full biblio-
facts about the poet’s life, and focuses on events graphical information.
and times in the author’s life that inspired the
poem in question. • Further Reading: an alphabetical list of other
critical sources which may prove useful for the
• Poem Text: when permission has been granted, student. It includes full bibliographical infor-
the poem is reprinted, allowing for quick refer- mation and a brief annotation.
ence when reading the explication of the fol-
lowing section. In addition, each entry contains the following high-
lighted sections, set apart from the main text as
• Poem Summary: a description of the major sidebars:
events in the poem. Summaries are broken down
with subheads that indicate the lines being dis- • Media Adaptations: if available, a list of audio
cussed. recordings as well as any film or television adap-
tations of the poem, including source informa-
• Themes: a thorough overview of how the ma- tion.
jor topics, themes, and issues are addressed
within the poem. Each theme discussed appears • Topics for Further Study: a list of potential
in a separate subhead and is easily accessed study questions or research topics dealing with
through the boldface entries in the Subject/ the poem. This section includes questions re-
Theme Index. lated to other disciplines the student may be
studying, such as American history, world his-
• Style: this section addresses important style el- tory, science, math, government, business, ge-
ements of the poem, such as form, meter, and ography, economics, psychology, etc.
rhyme scheme; important literary devices used,
such as imagery, foreshadowing, and symbol- • Compare and Contrast: an “at-a-glance” com-
ism; and, if applicable, genres to which the work parison of the cultural and historical differences
might have belonged, such as Gothicism or Ro- between the author’s time and culture and late
manticism. Literary terms are explained within twentieth century or early twenty-first century
the entry, but can also be found in the Glossary. Western culture. This box includes pertinent
parallels between the major scientific, political,
• Historical Context: this section outlines the so- and cultural movements of the time or place the
cial, political, and cultural climate in which the poem was written, the time or place the poem
author lived and the poem was created. This sec- was set (if a historical work), and modern West-
tion may include descriptions of related histor- ern culture. Works written after 1990 may not
ical events, pertinent aspects of daily life in the have this box.
culture, and the artistic and literary sensibilities

xii Poetry for Students

Introduction

• What Do I Read Next?: a list of works that When citing text from PfS that is not attributed
might complement the featured poem or serve to a particular author (i.e., the Themes, Style, His-
as a contrast to it. This includes works by the torical Context sections, etc.), the following format
same author and others, works of fiction and should be used in the bibliography section:
nonfiction, and works from various genres, cul-
tures, and eras. “Angle of Geese.” Poetry for Students. Eds. Marie
Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale,
Other Features 1998. 5–7.

PfS includes “Just a Few Lines on a Page,” a When quoting the specially commissioned es-
foreword by David J. Kelly, an adjunct professor say from PfS (usually the first piece under the “Crit-
of English, College of Lake County, Illinois. This icism” subhead), the following format should be
essay provides a straightforward, unpretentious ex- used:
planation of why poetry should be marveled at and
how Poetry for Students can help teachers show Velie, Alan. Critical Essay on “Angle of Geese.”
students how to enrich their own reading experi- Poetry for Students. Eds. Marie Napierkowski and
ences. Mary Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 7–10.

A Cumulative Author/Title Index lists the au- When quoting a journal or newspaper essay
thors and titles covered in each volume of the PfS that is reprinted in a volume of PfS, the following
series. form may be used:

A Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index Luscher, Robert M. “An Emersonian Context of
breaks down the authors and titles covered in each Dickinson’s ‘The Soul Selects Her Own Society.’”
volume of the PfS series by nationality and eth- ESQ: A Journal of American Renaissance Vol. 30,
nicity. No. 2 (Second Quarter, 1984), 111–16; excerpted and
reprinted in Poetry for Students, Vol. 1, eds. Marie
A Subject/Theme Index, specific to each vol- Napierkowski and Mary Ruby (Detroit: Gale, 1998),
ume, provides easy reference for users who may be pp. 266–69.
studying a particular subject or theme rather than
a single work. Significant subjects from events to When quoting material reprinted from a book
broad themes are included, and the entries point- that appears in a volume of PfS, the following form
ing to the specific theme discussions in each entry may be used:
are indicated in boldface.
Mootry, Maria K. “‘Tell It Slant’: Disguise and Dis-
A Cumulative Index of First Lines (beginning covery as Revisionist Poetic Discourse in ‘The Bean
in Vol. 10) provides easy reference for users who Eaters,’” in A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her
may be familiar with the first line of a poem but Poetry and Fiction. Edited by Maria K. Mootry and
may not remember the actual title. Gary Smith. University of Illinois Press, 1987.
177–80, 191; excerpted and reprinted in Poetry for
A Cumulative Index of Last Lines (beginning Students, Vol. 2, eds. Marie Napierkowski and Mary
in Vol. 10) provides easy reference for users who Ruby (Detroit: Gale, 1998), pp. 22–24.
may be familiar with the last line of a poem but
may not remember the actual title. We Welcome Your Suggestions

Each entry may include illustrations, including The editor of Poetry for Students welcomes
a photo of the author and other graphics related to your comments and ideas. Readers who wish to
the poem. suggest poems to appear in future volumes, or who
have other suggestions, are cordially invited to con-
Citing Poetry for Students tact the editor. You may contact the editor via E-
mail at: [email protected]. Or write
When writing papers, students who quote di- to the editor at:
rectly from any volume of Poetry for Students may
use the following general forms. These examples Editor, Poetry for Students
are based on MLA style; teachers may request that The Gale Group
students adhere to a different style, so the follow- 27500 Drake Rd.
ing examples may be adapted as needed. Farmington Hills, MI 48331–3535

Volume 19 xiii

Literary Chronology

1809 Alfred Tennyson is born August 6 in 1937 Alicia Ostriker is born on November 11 in
Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Brooklyn, New York.

1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Proem” is pub- 1942 Marilyn Hacker is born on November 27 in
lished. Bronx, New York.

1863 Constantine Peter Cavafy is born on April 1943 Michael Ondaatje is born on September 12
17 in Alexandria, Egypt. in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

1875 Rainer Maria Rilke is born December 4 in 1947 Ellen Bass is born on June 16 in Philadel-
Prague, Austria. phia, Pennsylvania.

1892 Alfred Tennyson dies on October 6 in Eng- 1948 Diane Ackerman is born on October 7 in
land. Waukegan, Illinois.

1894 e. e. cummings is born October 14 in Cam- 1953 Tony Hoagland is born on November 19 in
bridge, Massachusetts. Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

1902 Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Childhood” is pub- 1954 Sandra Cisneros is born on December 20 in
lished. Chicago, Illinois.

1911 C. P. Cavafy’s “Ithaka” is published. 1957 Jill Bialosky is born in Cleveland, Ohio.

1915 Ruth Stone is born June 8 in Roanoke, Vir- 1962 e. e. cummings dies on September 3.
ginia.
1971 A. R. Ammons’s “The City Limits” is pub-
1926 Rainer Maria Rilke dies on December 29 in lished.
Montreaux, Switzerland, of leukemia.
1980 Alicia Ostriker’s “His Speed and Strength”
1926 A. R. Ammons is born on February 18 near is published.
Whiteville, North Carolina.
1983 Gary Snyder’s “True Night” is published.
1930 Ted Hughes is born August 17 in Mytholm-
royd in West Yorkshire, England. 1984 Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cinnamon Peeler”
is published.
1930 Gary Snyder is born on May 8 in San Fran-
cisco, California. 1994 Sandra Cisneros’s “Once Again I Prove the
Theory of Relativity” is published.
1931 e. e. cummings’s “somewhere i have never
travelled,gladly beyond” is published. 1998 Diane Ackerman’s “On Location in the Loire
Valley” is published.
1933 Constantine Peter Cavafy dies on April 29
of cancer of the larynx. 1998 Ted Hughes dies on October 28 in Devon,
England, of cancer.

xv

Literary Chronology

1998 Ted Hughes’s “Perfect Light” is published. 2001 Ellen Bass’s “And What If I Spoke of De-
1999 Ruth Stone’s “Ordinary Words” is published. spair” is published.
1999 Tony Hoagland’s “Social Life” is published.
1999 Marilyn Hacker’s “The Boy” is published. 2001 Jill Bialosky’s “Seven Seeds” is published.

2001 A. R. Ammons dies on February 25 in Ithaca,
New York.

xvi Poetry for Students

Acknowledgments

The editors wish to thank the copyright hold- Taylor. © 1998 by the Modern Poetry Association.
ers of the excerpted criticism included in this vol- Reproduced by permission of the Editor of Poetry
ume and the permissions managers of many book and the author.—Prairie Schooner, v. 75, Fall,
and magazine publishing companies for assisting 2001. © 2001 by University of Nebraska Press. Re-
us in securing reproduction rights. We are also produced from Prairie Schooner by permission of
grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the University of Nebraska Press.—Raritan: A
the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Quarterly Review, v. 21, Winter, 2002. Copyright
Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/ © 2002 by Raritan: A Quarterly Review. Repro-
Kresge Library Complex, and the University of duced by permission.—Southern Humanities Re-
Michigan Libraries for making their resources view, v. 7, Spring, 1973. Copyright 1973 by Auburn
available to us. Following is a list of the copyright University. Reproduced by permission.—The Vir-
holders who have granted us permission to repro- ginia Quarterly Review, v. 62, Autumn, 1986.
duce material in this volume of Poetry for Students Copyright, 1986, by The Virginia Quarterly Re-
(PfS). Every effort has been made to trace copy- view, The University of Virginia. Reproduced by
right, but if omissions have been made, please let permission of the publisher.
us know.
COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN PfS,
COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN PfS, VOLUME 19, WERE REPRODUCED FROM
VOLUME 19, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS:
THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS:
Ammons, A. R. From Briefings: Poems Small
Americas Review, v. xviii, Spring, 1990. Arte and Easy. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copy-
Publico Press 1990 University of Houston. Repro- right © 1971 by A. R. Ammons. Reproduced by
duced by permission.—Dalhousie Review, v. 51, permission.—Bass, Ellen. From Mules of Love.
Summer, 1971 for “Tennyson’s In Memoriam as BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002. Copyright © 2002 by
Love Poetry,” by Joanne P. Zuckermann. Repro- Ellen Bass. All rights reserved. Reproduced by per-
duced by permission of the publisher and the au- mission.—Bradley, A.C. From A Commentary on
thor.—Journal of Modern Literature, Summer, Tennyson’s in Memoriam. Archon Books, 1966.
2000. Copyright 2000 Indiana University Press. Reproduced by permission.—Capri-Karka, C.
Reproduced by permission.—Ploughshares, v. 25, From Love and Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of
Spring 1999 for “Social Life,” by Tony Hoagland. Cavafy, Eliot , and Seferis. Pella Publishing Com-
Copyright 1999 by Tony Hoagland. Reproduced by pany, 1982. Copyright © 1982 by Carmen Karka.
permission of the author.—Poetry, v. 173, Decem- All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—
ber, 1998 for “I Praise My Destroyer,” by John Cavafy, C.P. From C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems.

xvii

Acknowledgments

Edited by George Savidis. Translated by Edmund produced by permission.—Chambord, Chateau,
Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University built by Henry II, photograph by Adam Wooliftt.
Press, 1975. Translation © 1975 Edmund Keeley Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Cisneros,
and Philip Sherrard. All rights reserved. Repro- Sandra, 1991, photograph by Dana Tynan.
duced by permission of Princeton University AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permis-
Press.—Hacker, Marilyn. From Squares and sion.—Cummings, E. E. (wearing a dark coat, look-
Courtyards. W.W. Norton & Co., 2000. Copyright ing at camera), photograph. The Library of
© 2000 by Marilyn Hacker. All rights reserved. Congress.—Fountain of Persephone in front of the
Reproduced by permission.—Ostriker, Alicia. town hall in Pozan, Poland, photograph by Ludovic
From The Little Space. University of Pittsburgh Maisant. Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—
Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998, Alicia Suskin Os- Hacker, Marilyn, 1975, photograph. AP/Wide
triker. Reproduced by permission.—Rilke, Rainer World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—
Maria. From Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Hoagland, Tony, photograph by Dorothy Alexan-
Rilke. Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979. Copyright der. Reproduced by permission.—Hughes, Ted and
© 1981 by Robert Bly. All rights reserved. Repro- wife Carol, 1984, photograph. AP/Wide World
duced by permission of HarperCollins Publish- Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Lord Ten-
ers.—Tennyson, Alfred. From In Memoriam, nyson, Alfred, photograph. AP/Wide World Pho-
Maud and Other Poems. J. M. Dent & Sons Lim- tos. Reproduced by permission.—Ostriker, Alicia,
ited, 1974. Reproduced by permission. photograph by J. P. Ostriker. Reproduced by per-
mission of Alicia Ostriker.—Rilke, Rainer Maria,
PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS photograph. Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by per-
APPEARING IN PfS, VOLUME 19, WERE mission.—Snyder, Gary, photograph. AP/Wide
RECEIVED FROM THE FOLLOWING World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Stone,
SOURCES: Ruth, as she receives the 2002 National Book
Award for poetry, photograph Mark Lennihan.
Ackerman, Diane, photograph by Toshi Ot- AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permis-
suki. © 1996 The Hearst Corporation. Reproduced sion.—Odyssey Sirens, photograph. Mary Evans
by permission.—Ammons, A.R., E. Annie Proulx, Picture Library. Reproduced by permission.—On-
New York City, 1993, photograph by Ron Frenm. daatje, Michael, photograph by Thomas Victor. Re-
AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permis- produced by permission of the Harriet M. Spurlin
sion.—Bass, Ellen looking at camera, photograph on behalf of the Estate of Thomas Victor.
by Joan Bobkoff. Joan Bobkoff Photography. Re-

xviii Poetry for Students

Contributors

Bryan Aubrey: Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English Daniel Moran: Moran is a teacher of English and
and has published many articles on twentieth American literature. Original essay on Perfect
century literature. Entries on Ithaka, Once Again Light.
I Prove the Theory of Relativity, On Location in
the Loire Valley, and True Night. Original es- Frank Pool: Pool is a published poet and reviewer
says on And What If I Spoke of Despair, Ithaka, and teaches advanced placement and interna-
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity, On tional baccalaureate English. Original essay on
Location in the Loire Valley, somewhere i have Childhood.
never travelled,gladly beyond, and True Night.
Ryan D. Poquette: Poquette has a bachelor’s de-
Adrian Blevins: Blevins has published essays and gree in English and specializes in writing about
poems in many magazines, journals, and anthol- literature. Entries on And What If I Spoke of
ogies and teaches writing at Roanoke College. Despair, The Cinnamon Peeler, His Speed and
Original essay on Social Life. Strength, and somewhere i have never travelled,
gladly beyond. Original essays on And What If
Tamara Fernando: Fernando is a Seattle-based I Spoke of Despair, The Cinnamon Peeler, His
editor. Original essay on The Cinnamon Peeler. Speed and Strength, On Location in the Loire
Valley, Seven Seeds, and somewhere i have
Joyce Hart: Hart is a published writer who fo- never travelled,gladly beyond.
cuses on literary themes. Original essay on His
Speed and Strength. Chris Semansky: Semansky’s essays and reviews
appear regularly in journals and newspapers. En-
Pamela Steed Hill: Hill is the author of a poetry tries on The Boy, Childhood, and Ordinary
collection, has published widely in literary jour- Words. Original essays on The Boy, Childhood,
nals, and is an editor for a university publica- and Ordinary Words.
tions department. Entries on Perfect Light and
Social Life. Original essays on Perfect Light and Daniel Toronto: Toronto is an editor at the Penn-
Social Life. sylvania State University Press. Original essay
on The Cinnamon Peeler.
Catherine Dybiec Holm: Holm is a freelance
writer with speculative fiction and nonfiction Scott Trudell: Trudell is a freelance writer with
publications. Original essay on The Boy. a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Entry
on Seven Seeds. Original essay on Seven Seeds.
David Kelly: Kelly is a creative writing and lit-
erature instructor at two colleges in Illinois. En- Mark White: White is a Seattle-based publisher,
tries on The City Limits and Proem. Original editor, and teacher. Original essay on The City
essays on The City Limits and Proem. Limits.

xix

And What If I Spoke
of Despair

Ellen Bass’s “And What If I Spoke of Despair” was Ellen Bass
first published in the Missouri Review in 2001, al- 2001
though it experienced a wider distribution with its
2002 publication in Bass’s latest poetry collection,
Mules of Love. Bass’s poem discusses her despair
over the actions of modern humans, including the
destruction of the environment and genetic engi-
neering, two factors that make her lose hope in the
sanctity of humanity as a whole. In her poem, Bass
cautions her readers to do their part to fight these
issues. Bass wrote her poem at a time when envi-
ronmentalism and genetic engineering were both
hot topics in the media, often leading to polarized
debates. Unlike most of Bass’s nonfiction works,
like The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Sur-
vivors of Child Sexual Abuse (1988), this poem
does not deal with the issue of child abuse. The
poem does, however, address negative issues, like
much of Bass’s poetry and nonfiction. A current
copy of the poem can be found in Mules of Love,
which was published by BOA Editions, Ltd., as part
of the American Poets Continuum Series, in 2002.

Author Biography

Bass was born on June 16, 1947, in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Bass attended Goucher College,
where she graduated magna cum laude in 1968 with
her bachelor’s degree. She pursued a master’s de-
gree at Boston University and graduated in 1970.

1

And What If I Spoke of Despair

terms with their painful pasts and move on with
their lives.

Poem Text

From 1970–1974, Bass worked as an administrator Poem Summary
at Project Place, a social service center in Boston.
Bass has been teaching Writing About Our Lives Lines 1–6
workshops since 1974 in Santa Cruz, California.
She also teaches nationally and internationally at “And What If I Spoke of Despair” begins with
writing conferences and universities. the titular question: “And what if I spoke of de-
spair—who doesn’t / feel it?” Immediately, read-
In the early 1970s, Bass also began publishing ers are engaged, because the poet is implying that
her own and others’ poetry. In 1973, she coedited everybody, including her readers, feels despair. In
(with Florence Howe) a collection of poems enti-
tled No More Masks: An Anthology of Poems by
Women. This collection included selections of
Bass’s own poetry, but she soon began to publish
her own volumes, beginning with I’m Not Your
Laughing Daughter, which was also published in
1973. Her other poetry collections include Of Sep-
arateness and Merging (1977), For Earthly Survival
(1980), Our Stunning Harvest: Poems (1985) and
Mules of Love (2002), which includes, “And What
If I Spoke of Despair,” a poem that was chosen for
the 2002 Editor’s Prize from the Missouri Review.

Bass is most known for her nonfiction works,
such as The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women
Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (1988) and Be-
ginning to Heal: A First Book for Survivors of
Child Sexual Abuse (1993), both of which she
wrote with Laura Davis. These books, and others
like it, have helped countless survivors come to

2 Poetry for Students

And What If I Spoke of Despair

the second through sixth lines, she uses a long sen- someday live on only in the photo. In the same way,
tence to go into more detail about the physical ef- the poet is implying that someday natural phenom-
fects of despair on people. The poet uses the phrase ena might only be as alive as the images in a photo.
“Who doesn’t know the way it seizes,” to under-
score her belief that everybody feels despair at Although the poet is giving some indication
some point or another. Likewise, by noting the that she is worried over the future life of nature,
blood sloshing through “our” veins, she attributes she has not yet explained why exactly she is con-
the rush of blood—the physical side effect of an cerned. At the beginning of line fifteen, the poet
increased heart rate, one of the side effects of many once again turns the discussion from the global,
powerful emotions such as fear or despair—to the general images of nature, to the specific life of the
community at large. At the same time, the poet is reader. She says “or your own self, as a child,” en-
careful to note that, while everybody feels despair, couraging each reader to remember back to his or
there is no comfort in this fact; grief is still very her own childhood. The poet draws on an image
much a “personal” experience. Having defined her that many of her readers will identify with, a fam-
belief that despair effects everybody, although in ily day on the beach. The scene she draws is one
individual ways, the poet now hooks the reader of peace and innocence, of a child falling asleep in
with a very odd statement that starts in the last half the sun, without a care in the world.
of line six and continues through until line eight.
Lines 20–25
Lines 7–11
At the beginning of line twenty, however, the
The statement, “It’s beauty / that brings it on, poet brings the reader back from this happy mem-
calls it out from the wings / for one more song,” ory into the present. It is at this point that the poet
seems out of place. Bass is deliberately trying to confronts the reader directly, “That’s when you
disorient her readers. In the previous lines, she has can’t deny it.” The poet talks about the fact that el-
introduced the idea of despair and grief, so one ements like water and air are still in existence, and
might expect that the rest of the poem is going to equates these natural elements with a mother’s nur-
be a dark poem, filled with negative images. Bass turing, which she expresses in simple images:
takes the exact opposite approach, however. She “sweeping hair off our brow, her scent / swirling
says that the beauty of nature brings on her per- around us.” This underscores the family image that
sonal despair. She notes a very pastoral, natural im- she already used of a child at the beach. Up until
age, “Rain / pooled on a fallen oak leaf.” The now, Bass has combined beautiful images of na-
pooled rain creates a mirror, in which the poet can ture with an increasing sense of doom but has not
see a reflection of a cloudy sky, an image that im- explained why people should be concerned. In the
plies an uncertain future. At this point, Bass still middle of line twenty-three, however, the poet
has not explained why these beautiful images of notes that the child, humanity, is destroying its
nature make her grieve. mother, nature. Ultimately, humanity’s pollution,
such as the kind created by automobiles, could de-
Lines 12–19 stroy Mother Nature’s ability to nurture. Bass holds
all humanity responsible, including the readers:
Over the next few lines, Bass continues this “But now your own / car is pumping poison, de-
trend of providing a natural image, yet does not ex- livering its fair / share of destruction.” In the mid-
plain why this brings her pain. She talks about “the dle of line twenty-five, the poet begins to discuss
red moon / in September,” which is so massive and genetic engineering, another factor that she says is
awe-inspiring that people feel compelled to stop destroying nature.
their cars and get out and look at it. Following this
image, at the end of line thirteen and into the next Lines 26–28
line, Bass switches gears somewhat, with the
phrase: “like a photo / of a lover in his uniform, not She starts by talking about a salmon that has
yet gone.” The reader starts to get an indication of been genetically engineered “with the red, white,
why natural images are bringing the poet grief. The and blue shining on one side.” The colors refer to
hypothetical photo of the soldier in uniform, and the the colors of the American flag. Bass is noting the
observation that he is “not yet gone,” implies that fact that when countries begin genetic engineering,
someday he will be. Military service can be a dan- they take ownership of nature and could start liter-
gerous job, and the poet is noting that even though ally modifying natural organisms like fish to dis-
the lover is alive in her hypothetical photo, he may play a symbol of ownership, in this case the
American flag. While Bass feels this is bad enough,

Volume 19 3

And What If I Spoke of Despair

in line twenty-seven, Bass notes that genetic engi- Themes
neering sometimes crosses even more profound
natural boundaries, such as the boundary between Despair
plant and animal—as in the case of “Frog genes
spliced into tomatoes.” Bass sees this as an affront As the title indicates, the poet is mainly dis-
to the tomato, which she says has been “humiliated cussing despair, which is a profound and total loss
enough.” Readers might wonder what Bass means of hope. In the beginning of the poem, Bass de-
by this statement. Most likely, the poet is referring scribes the physical effects of despair, the sudden
to various genetic experiments on tomatoes that rush of blood through a person’s veins when they
took place around the turn of the twenty-first cen- begin to feel this powerful emotion, the way that
tury, when Bass wrote the poem. despair “seizes, / leaving us limp.” Following this
introduction, Bass gives readers several examples
Lines 29–33 that explain why she is losing hope. She cites sev-
eral natural items, such as rain, sky, leaves, and
In line twenty-nine, Bass uses the idea of ge- sand, drawing the reader into the natural world. She
netic engineering to segue into the threat of nuclear also talks about lost loved ones, or at least the po-
war: “I heard a man argue that genetic / engineering tential for lost loved ones, by invoking a hypo-
was more dangerous / than a nuclear bomb.” thetical “photo / of a lover in his uniform, not yet
Through another question, presumably directed at the gone.” This draws the reader into the human world.
reader, Bass wonders about the implications of this Throughout the poem, Bass warms her readers up
argument: “Should I be thankful / he was alarmed to both of these worlds, invoking ideas with which
by one threat, or worried / he’d gotten used to the most readers can identify, such as a family day at
other?” Bass is noting the fact that the threat of nu- the beach, where “you fell asleep with sand / in the
clear warfare, while still a threat, has been around crack of your smooth behind.” Bass speaks about
for six decades, since the end of World War II ush- the natural and human worlds in ways that imply
ered in the atomic age. This has given many people they may not exist, at least in their present forms,
time to get used to it. The widespread discussion and someday. Over the course of the poem, Bass re-
use of genetic engineering, however, is relatively veals that her despair is generated from the fact that
new. So for many it can be perceived as more of a the purity of nature and the sanctity of humanity,
threat, because people are not used to it yet. Bass’s two things in which she believes deeply, are being
question also implies, in a subtle way, that if genetic compromised in various ways.
engineering is allowed to continue, perhaps someday
people will get used to this, too. At the end of line Environmental Destruction
thirty-three, Bass shifts gears one last time.
The first major way that nature is being de-
Lines 34–42 stroyed is through pollution. The example she cites
is air pollution: “But now your own / car is pump-
For these remaining nine lines, Bass acknowl- ing poison, delivering its fair / share of destruction.”
edges that she has reason to lose hope that these is- Air pollution results from the release of certain
sues will be resolved: “Maybe I can’t / offer you chemicals into the air. One of the most common is
any more than you can offer me.” In other words, the release of carbon monoxide, which is a by-prod-
Bass is saying that she does not have any solutions uct from the use of internal combustion engines
to offer the reader, and the reader most likely does found in many vehicles. This is a form of pollution
not have any solutions to offer her. Yet, Bass is de- that many people, including Bass’s readers, help to
fiant and refuses to just sit and do nothing. Her way create. Air pollution is not the only environmentally
of coping with the problems addressed in the poem destructive thing that humanity creates, but it is the
is to confront her despair directly. In this final, ex- only one mentioned in the poem. This is intentional
tended image, the poet stands in a very natural set- on Bass’s part. Generally speaking, poets aim to uti-
ting, “on the trail, with shreds / of manzanita bark lize as little space as possible to convey their mean-
lying in russet scrolls / and yellow bay leaves.” In ing to the reader. Each word has a purpose, and
this setting, the poet embraces despair as she has extraneous words or lines are ruthlessly cut, so that
her own children. Just as she sometimes held her the poem can be tightly constructed and have the
children even when it was unnecessary to hold most impact. Bass realizes that discussions of en-
them, the poet acknowledges that embracing de- vironmental destruction are generally not limited to
spair is an unnecessary act because it probably will one issue, such as air pollution. Like the Earth’s
not change anything. ecosystem, many aspects of environmentalism are

4 Poetry for Students

And What If I Spoke of Despair

interconnected, and it is difficult to discuss one en- Topics for
vironmental issue without getting into other related Further
issues. Bass could have filled this section of her Study
poem with several examples of environmental
destruction to get her point across. Yet, this is un- • Read through magazines, newspapers, or other
necessary, because most of her audience will un- media sources to research the major issues in the
derstand that air pollution from cars is not the only debate over human cloning. Plot the pros and
issue that threatens to destroy the environment. cons of these issues on a board, citing at least
one media source for each pro and con.
Genetic Engineering
• Imagine that it is a time in the future and you are
Genetic engineering, on the other hand, is rel- the world’s first human clone. Write a short jour-
atively new, so Bass feels compelled to give more nal entry that describes what your life is like on
than one example. Although some of Bass’s audi- a typical day. Be creative and try to incorporate
ence may be familiar with the various genetic ex- situations that only a human clone would face.
periments that are being performed these days, they
might not realize the extent to which genetics is be- • Research the pros and cons of genetically mod-
ing used to modify animals and plants. For this rea- ified foods. Pick one major associated issue (eth-
son, Bass gives one example of each. The first ical, political, medical, etc.) and use that issue
example, a “salmon / with the red, white, and blue to write and deliver a speech that explains why
shining on one side,” demonstrates the sometimes you are either for or against genetically modi-
ludicrous applications that humans have for sci- fied foods. Use whatever support you can find
ence. Genetic engineering gives humanity the to make your case and provide supplementary
power to change nature any way it wants, in the- photos, charts, or other graphics, if possible.
ory at least, and Bass notes that this power is be-
ing used in frivolous ways—such as creating signs • Research the state of environmentalism today
of ownership like the American flag. and compare it to the state of environmentalism
in the late 1980s, in the period following the
In her second example, which addresses ge- Exxon Valdez oil spill. Research and discuss the
netically modified food, Bass paints a Frankenstein- effectiveness of environmentally motivated ef-
like picture of weird experiments involving forts such as recycling and paperwork reduction.
mismatched parts—in this case “Frog genes spliced
into tomatoes.” Nature would never create this com- • Research the various processes that are required
bination, and Bass is saying that since humanity is to create nuclear weapons and other weapons of
doing this, it is threatening the purity of both nature mass destruction, as well as which countries
and humanity. Although the poem only directly ad- have the most of these weapons. Create a board
dresses the genetic engineering of fish and toma- that lists all of these weapons. For each one, in-
toes, the unspoken fear is that this tampering might clude a capsule description of the weapon and
eventually lead to tampering with or cloning of hu- list the five countries who possess the largest
man genes. This is why Bass cites one man’s argu- amounts of these weapons.
ment that genetic engineering is “more dangerous /
than a nuclear bomb.” While a nuclear bomb can
kill an immense number of people, it has only the
power to destroy. Some people believe this is sec-
ondary to the effects of genetic engineering, which
can change humanity itself at the genetic level.

Style many to be deafened “by the slosh / of our own
blood.” The imagery soon turns positive, however,
Imagery when Bass says “It’s beauty” that evokes her de-
spair. At this cue, Bass switches gears and gives
One of the reasons that Bass’s poem works so the reader several positive images of natural and
well is her use of powerful imagery that is both human beauty. Bass paints natural pictures such as
positive and negative. The poem begins with a neg- “Rain / pooled on a fallen oak leaf,” a sublime Sep-
ative image of the effects of despair that cause tember moon, and even the image of her readers in

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And What If I Spoke of Despair

childhood, frolicking at the beach, unaware of any- Historical Context
thing bad. Because the poet goes to such great
lengths to show the good things about nature and Environmentalism
humanity, these images give the poem more impact
when it turns dark. The images ultimately work as Although environmentalism had existed in one
an emotional hook to grab the reader, because the form or another for centuries, environmental con-
poet’s argument, revealed over time through the sciousness as we know it today did not happen un-
poem, is that these pretty pictures might not exist til the late 1980s and early 1990s, thanks in large
in the future if current trends in environmental de- part to a number of high-profile environmental in-
struction and genetic engineering continue. At the cidents. In 1985, French government agents sank
end of the poem, these two image systems, nega- the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the nonvio-
tive and positive, combine in one final, powerful lent, environmental pressure group, Greenpeace, in
image of the poet embracing her despair even as Auckland Harbor, New Zealand. The same year,
she stands among the source of it—the beautiful British meteorologists confirmed their earlier sus-
nature that she fears will someday be destroyed or picion that humans’ use of certain chemicals had
altered beyond recognition. created a hole in Earth’s ozone layer over Antarc-
tica. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, how-
Personification ever, was the incident that really galvanized the
public. On March 24, the tanker crashed into an un-
Besides imagery, Bass also relies on personi- derwater reef, dumping more than ten million gal-
fication to explain the depths of her despair. Per- lons of oil into the pristine waters of Alaska’s
sonification is a technique by which the poet Prince William Sound. Shortly after this accident,
ascribes human qualities to nonhuman objects or the media began to cover all environmental issues,
ideas. When she first introduces the beautiful na- including pollution, deforestation, acid rain, the
ture that she is afraid of losing, Bass talks about it widespread use of landfills and incinerators, over-
as if it is alive in the human sense: “It’s beauty / population, and wildlife extinction. This trend con-
that brings it on, calls it out from the wings / for tinued off and on throughout the 1990s, sparking
one more song.” Beauty is an intangible concept. an interest in recycling and other ecologically
It has no physical form, so it cannot actually call friendly methods that many consumers tried. Al-
out. In the poet’s world, however, beauty becomes though environmentalism was still active by the
a living thing, calling out despair, which in turn time Bass wrote her poem in 2001, the world was
sings its mournful song. This is another use of per- beginning to turn its attention to more pressing is-
sonification, since despair is also an intangible con- sues, the most prominent being the new war against
cept that could not literally sing in the real world. terrorism.

Bass uses other examples of personification in Genetically Modified Food
the poem, such as the “humiliated” tomato. The
most notable use of personification, however, is the The 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly
depiction of nature as a human mother. People use the sheep, the first adult mammal clone, sparked a
the term Mother Nature frequently, as a respectful wealth of debates about cloning, as well as genetic
way of referring to the natural world that has sup- engineering in general. By the time Bass wrote her
ported humankind since its inception. In this poem, poem, one of the most heated debates was about
however, Bass is giving Mother Nature actual, the use of genetic engineering to modify foods. A
mother-like qualities, once again in the human massive protest movement began in Great Britain
sense. The water and air that the poet references and spread to the rest of Europe and the United
act like a nurturing human mother, “sweeping hair States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Pro-
off our brow.” Bass’s purpose for this soon be- ponents of genetically modified (GM) foods
comes clear. By making nature a living, human- claimed that crops could be made that were re-
like thing, the effect is stronger when the poet talks sistant to attacks by insects. They also stated that
about humanity killing it. Humans destroy plants, they could genetically engineer crops that included
animals, and other agents of nature on a routine ba- vaccines, which could in turn help fight diseases
sis, and many do not notice. The loss of human life, like hepatitis B. Opponents claimed that scien-
however, is more likely to elicit an emotional re- tists were tampering too much with nature and that
sponse. Because of this, when Bass talks about hu- researchers could not possibly predict all of the
manity’s “mother” being poisoned by air pollution, potential consequences of such measures. Many
it seems like even more of a tragedy. people were also concerned about the commer-

6 Poetry for Students

And What If I Spoke of Despair

cialization of engineered crops. Large firms in the While many poets
United States bought up many varieties of seeds, have talked about the
and some speculated that in the future the world’s positive aspects of childhood,
crops could be owned by a few companies who in this poem childhood, like
would determine the fate of much of the world’s the beauty of nature, is a
food supply. negative thing because it
indicates something positive
Despite the controversy, scientists continued to that is gone.”
study and implement new genetic methods. In
2001, researchers at Cornell University identified poem is slightly different. Her elegy mourns the
a gene in tomato plants that helps to determine the loss of nature itself, which is being altered by hu-
size of the tomato fruit. This landmark discovery man intervention through processes such as envi-
caused some to speculate that crops in the future ronmental destruction and genetic engineering.
might be engineered to larger, previously unattain- Since her poem is mourning the loss of something,
able sizes. Proponents of genetically modified it does not differ in a basic sense from any other
foods say that larger fruits could be used to help elegy. Bass’s poem does have one huge difference,
wipe out starvation on a global level, since each however. Her poem is an elegy for something that
fruit could feed more people. is not yet dead. As she is writing her poem, nature
is still alive. Bass’s point is that it will not be alive,
Critical Overview or at least will not be alive in the same form, if cur-
rent human interventions continue in the future.
One searches in vain for criticism on Bass’s “And Bass uses several techniques to convince her read-
What If I Spoke of Despair” or any of her poetry, ers to mourn the loss of something that is not yet
for that matter. The most likely reason for this is gone, including juxtaposition of opposites and the
that Bass is known mostly for her self-help books use of symbolism and metaphor.
designed to help childhood survivors of sexual
abuse, the most famous of which is The Courage Bass’s poem employs several techniques to
to Heal (1988). Bass has also written Free Your give it a powerful effect. The first of these, and the
Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual technique that gives the poem its overall structure,
Youth (1996), a book designed to guide gay, les- is the juxtaposition of opposites. Throughout the
bian, and bisexual youth through sexual-identity is- poem, Bass bounces back and forth from positive
sues. “And What If I Spoke of Despair,” while to negative images and ideas, beginning with the
different in theme than most of Bass’s other works, overall negative idea of despair itself. Despair is a
still deals with negative issues—the destruction of monumental feeling that affects everybody, as Bass
the environment and genetic engineering, as op- notes when she says “who doesn’t / feel it?” While
posed to child abuse. despair affects everybody, it also does so in ways
that are unique to each person. Although each per-
Criticism son feels the same rushing of blood that is the phys-
ical side effect of powerful emotions like despair,
Ryan D. Poquette Bass says that this blood rushes “through the nar-
row, personal / channels of grief.” This image of
Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English personal grief only lasts for the first six lines.
and specializes in writing about literature. In the
following essay, Poquette discusses Bass’s use of At this point, Bass juxtaposes the negative im-
opposites, symbolism, and metaphor in her poem. age of despair with the positive image of beauty:
“It’s beauty / that brings it on, calls it out from the
Throughout history, poets have often written wings / for one more song.” Here, Bass identifies
elegies—mournful, sorrowful poetry that expresses
despair over something that is gone, generally
something that was once living and is now dead.
In most cases, the poet writes about a person or
group of people that have passed away. Bass’s

Volume 19 7

And What If I Spoke of Despair

several positive images of nature, such as rain, ond purpose, however. Blood is a universal sym-
which pools “on a fallen oak leaf.” She also reflects bol that is often used to denote violence. Many of
on the image of a beautiful September moon. Yet, the negative images that Bass goes on to describe
even in the midst of these positive images, she car- in the poem—such as the air pollution—imply vi-
ries the thread of negativity. For example, while the olence, at least indirectly. The pollution is de-
rain on the leaf is beautiful, it also reflects “the pale structive, and is killing Mother Earth, just as a
cloudy sky.” The cloudy sky implies an uncertain “nuclear bomb” has drastic and violent effects on
future; it might rain again or it might not. Images the Earth. Even genetic engineering is considered
like this draw on both the positive and negative dangerous because it disrupts the natural order of
feelings that the poet is trying to convey. Bass also things. All of these are human inventions. Humans
uses this juxtaposition technique in her discussion in general are often described as destructive ani-
of the September moon, which she says people are mals, so Bass’s use of the blood symbol is an ef-
drawn to stare at, “like a photo / of a lover in his fective, if subtle, way to underscore the theme of
uniform, not yet gone.” While the image of the human-induced destruction.
beautiful red moon is inherently positive, the photo
of the soldier has negative implications, namely of Other potent symbols in the poem include
the possibility of the soldier’s death. People who childhood. Children, and childhood in general, is
sign up for or are drafted into military service rec- often a symbol for innocence, since most children
ognize that there is always the chance they might are not aware of, nor understand, the various neg-
not return from fighting. By using a photo of a ative aspects of humanity. The example that Bass
loved one in uniform, an inherently positive image, uses of the child at the beach underscores this idea
and juxtaposing this image with the possibility of of the innocence of childhood: “watching the sun
the soldier’s death, Bass once again carries the drift down, / lazy as a beach ball, and you fell asleep
thread of negativity, albeit in a subtle sense. with sand / in the crack of your smooth behind.”
The image is one of peace. The child does not have
This juxtaposition continues throughout the a care in the world and so can drift off to sleep with
poem in several ways. Bass juxtaposes a pleasant no worries. Even the use of the word “smooth” de-
image of a happy childhood day at the beach “on notes the difference between children, whose
that day your family stayed / at the sea, watching smooth skin is a universal sign of youth, and adults,
the sun drift down” with the direct address to the who become more wrinkled and haggard over time.
reader: “That’s when you can’t deny it.” This
abrupt switch from a dream-like memory to an ac- This symbol is ultimately not positive. While
cusation-style directive produces a negative feeling many poets have talked about the positive aspects
in the reader, which only continues as the poem of childhood, in this poem childhood, like the
juxtaposes a living Mother Earth with the human- beauty of nature, is a negative thing because it in-
produced poisons that are killing her, salmon that dicates something positive that is gone. Bass’s
have been genetically enhanced to display signs of readers are no longer children. They can no longer
ownership, and tomatoes that have been crossed simply fall asleep on a beach without a care in the
with frogs. world; they must face the negative issues of hu-
manity. Likewise, Mother Nature is changing. The
In addition to juxtaposing these images and various forms of pollution will have an effect on
ideas, Bass also chooses her words very carefully, her, changing her appearance just as time marks the
in many cases selecting words and phrases that smooth skin of a baby with wrinkles. Unlike the
have symbolic meanings. A symbol is a physical human process of aging, however, the destruction
object, action, or gesture that also represents an ab- of the Earth’s environment is not natural and could
stract concept, without losing its original identity. be prevented.
Symbols appear in literature in one of two ways.
They can be local symbols, meaning that their sym- It is this realization that leads to the most pow-
bolism is only relevant within a specific literary erful image in the poem. She “cradled despair / in
work. They can also be universal symbols, mean- my arms, the way I held my own babies.” A
ing that their symbolism is based on traditional as- metaphor is a technique where the poet gives an
sociations that are widely recognized, regardless of object a secondary meaning that does not normally
context. The poem relies on the latter type. Early belong to it. Bass does not literally mean that de-
in the poem, Bass uses the image of blood rushing spair is one of her children, a situation that is phys-
through a person’s veins to indicate the physical ically impossible in the real world. Metaphorically
effects of despair, as noted above. There is a sec- speaking, however, and within the context of the
poem, Bass does embrace her despair like she

8 Poetry for Students

And What If I Spoke of Despair

would one of her babies. The idea of cradling a The idea that living
negative emotion like despair is strange and sets up organisms can be patented
a compelling image for readers. This is especially by profit-driven private
true, since cradling is a protective gesture, and is corporations is disturbing
generally considered a positive thing. As Bass to many people. How can
notes, this maternal, protective instinct is hard to life be ‘owned’ in this way,
shut off sometimes. She remembers back to the they argue.”
time when she “held my own babies / after they’d
fallen asleep, when there was no / reason to hold of the chief causes of the phenomenon of global
them.” Despite the fact that the gesture was un- warming. Although the causes of global warming
necessary, Bass notes that she “didn’t want to put have long been known, the world community has
them down.” Likewise, Bass feels the same way still to take effective measures to combat it. Bass
about her despair. brings the problem home to the reader in a personal
way by saying it is “your own car” that is doing
This idea, ultimately, leads to Bass’s main the poisoning (by which she means herself, but the
point. She recognizes that there is probably nothing reader feels the jab too). In other words, the pol-
she, or any one person, can do to reverse the trends luting is not something that is being done to peo-
of environmental destruction, genetic engineering, ple against their will or unbeknownst to them by
and other human factors that are destroying nature some large corporation that can be conveniently de-
and humanity as she knows it. Yet, she refuses to monized; ordinary citizens are doing it themselves.
let her despair go and move on with her life. Hold-
ing on to these powerful emotions is the lesser of The pollution caused by the automobile is a
two negative choices. For the poet, it is better to well-known fact. Less well known is the second
mourn the future loss of nature and humanity, even target of the poet, to which Bass devotes much
if her suffering has no effect on a global scale, than more space. This is the genetic engineering (GE)
to put her emotions aside and perhaps become as of food crops, fish, and animals that has become
barren as life itself may be in the future. widespread since the mid-1990s.

Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on “And What If Genetic engineering is the process by which
I Spoke of Despair,” in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003. scientists, using what are called recombinant DNA
techniques, alter the genes of an organism. Genes
Bryan Aubrey carry the information that specifies the structures
of an organism. When genes are individually ma-
Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has pub- nipulated, it is possible to cross the species barrier
lished many articles on twentieth-century litera- and create organisms that are not found in nature.
ture. In this essay, Aubrey discusses the poet’s The ostensible purpose is to make the food more
protest against genetic engineering. useful or convenient for humans. For example, in
genetic engineering, genes from arctic flounder,
Bass’s “And What If I Spoke of Despair” is a which give the flounder its “antifreeze” qualities,
poem of passive protest. The poet sets appreciation are spliced into a tomato so that the tomato is able
of nature and her memories of childhood innocence to withstand cold temperatures and avoid frost
against the ugly fact of environmental degradation damage.
caused by human activities. The despair the speaker
feels is because she apparently sees no way of pre- Being forced to accommodate the genes of a
venting or reversing the threat to the human envi- fish was not the first indignity to be suffered by the
ronment. Instead of pursuing action to remedy the “humiliated” tomato of the poem. The tomato was
situation, the speaker concludes by turning her also the first food to be genetically engineered and
mind in on itself, examining the feeling of despair sold to consumers. This was in the form of the Flavr
and musing over what attitude to adopt to it.

The poem mentions two man-made disruptions
of the beauty of nature that the poet sees in phe-
nomena, such as rain gathered on a fallen oak leaf
or a full moon in September. The first is the pol-
lution caused by the gasoline-powered automobile,
“pumping poison, delivering its fair / share of de-
struction.” The pollution caused by automobiles is
due to the carbon dioxide they emit, which is one

Volume 19 9

And What If I Spoke of Despair

What Critics of genetic engineering claim that foods
Do I Read produced by use of recombinant DNA techniques
may not be safe and may also damage the envi-
Next? ronment. A case in point, as highlighted in the
poem, is that of salmon. By the use of foreign
• Over the past two decades, Bass’s The Courage growth hormone genes, select salmon have been
to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child genetically engineered to grow to market size in
Sexual Abuse (1988), written with Laura Davis, half the time it takes normal salmon. Some ecolo-
has become one of the standard self-help works gists fear that such salmon (which have not yet been
for abuse survivors. approved by the FDA for human consumption) will
escape from fish farms and mix with the wild
• Bass’s first nonfiction book is a collection of writ- salmon population. The ecological effects this
ings by women survivors of abuse: I Never Told might produce are unknown. A study at Purdue
Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child University concluded that genetically engineered
Sexual Abuse (co-edited with Louise Thornton). salmon could eradicate natural populations of wild
fish. This is because the genetically engineered
• The end of the world, by man-made or natural male salmon would be larger at sexual maturity and
disasters, has been a favorite topic of science would thereby attract more mates, and so would
fiction writers for the last century. In Bangs and quickly spread the genetically engineered charac-
Whimpers: Stories about the End of the World teristics to wild populations.
(1999), editor James Frenkel collects nineteen
apocalyptic tales by noted authors, including The attempt to create GE salmon has already
Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Connie Willis, had unwanted effects. According to a report by the
and Robert Heinlein. Associated Press in 2000 (referred to in Cummins
and Lilleston’s Genetically Engineered Food), one
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is a company in New Zealand decided to discontinue
nightmarish vision of what could happen in the its interest in GE salmon because of fear of where
future if politics and genetic technology supersede the technology could lead. Some of the salmon had
humanity. Huxley’s novel depicts a futuristic, deformed heads and other abnormalities.
“ideal” world where there is no sickness, disease,
or war. However, to achieve this ideal, people are Bearing in mind this and other concerns about
mass-produced in test tubes and social classes are the ecological effects, still untested and unknown,
created through genetic manipulations that prede- that GE organisms may have, the immense ramifi-
termine a person’s intelligence and body type. cations of genetic engineering can be readily under-
stood. As Suzanne Wuerthele (quoted in Cummins
• Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the and Lilleston), a toxicologist with the Environ-
Woods (1854), which is a collection of essays, mental Protection Agency, said in 2000, “This is
chronicles Thoreau’s attempts to get away from probably one of the most technologically powerful
human civilization by living on his own in the developments the world has ever seen. It’s the bi-
woods. Today, the book is generally known by ological equivalent of splitting the atom.” This ex-
the shorter name of Walden. plains Bass’s comments in the poem that she heard
a man say that genetic engineering is “more dan-
Savr tomato, made by Calgene, that had been en- gerous / than a nuclear bomb.”
gineered to stay firm for longer, thus acquiring a
longer shelf life. The Food and Drug Administra- What drives the recent explosion of genetically
tion (FDA) approved it for sale in 1994. The Flavr engineered products, advocates say, is a desire to
Savr tomato was a commercial failure, however, grow better food and to solve the world’s food
since consumers resisted the idea of a genetically problem. Opponents say it is really about over-en-
engineered product. It was withdrawn from the thusiastic scientific experimentation allied with the
market in 1996. desire for corporate profits. The salmon in the poem
is red, white, and blue—not literally, but because
it has been patented in the United States by the
company that developed it. Virtually all genetically
engineered foods, even though the companies that
create them are often multinational, have been
granted U.S. patents. A patent gives the owner the
exclusive right to an invention and any profit that

10 Poetry for Students

And What If I Spoke of Despair

accrues from it. Patents on living organisms have her life, she contemplates the feeling as an object
been allowed since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in itself. She seems to be weighing different ways
in 1980. The patenting of a product, whether ani- of dealing with this emotion, exploring what it re-
mal, plant, or seed, allows the companies concerned ally might be and what possibilities lie within it.
to reap a speedy return on the massive investments The emphasis has shifted from the outer world, with
they put into the development of genetically engi- its hopeless rash of insoluble problems, to the inner
neered organisms. world, full of mysterious possibilities. The speaker
wonders what would happen if she were to embrace
The idea that living organisms can be patented the feeling of despair as if it were something to be
by profit-driven private corporations is disturbing loved and cherished. She imagines a situation in
to many people. How can life be “owned” in this which, surrounded by examples of nature’s own
way, they argue. Add to this the fear that genetic beauty, she might “cradle” despair. This at first
engineering is in any case a violation of the in- seems a curiously passive way to end a poem that
tegrity of nature, and the impulse that drives “And has expressed such a keen awareness of social and
What If I Spoke of Despair” becomes clear. Nature environmental problems. One might perhaps call it
is no longer nature as it came fresh from God’s a fatalistic or pessimistic attitude. It is as if, re-
hands, with inviolable barriers placed between nouncing all hope, a condemned prisoner has at-
species, but a man-made jumble, created out of par- tained a state of calm: nothing can be done, so the
tial, highly fallible scientific knowledge that could inevitable fate must be embraced.
cause irreversible damage to the fragile, interde-
pendent ecosphere that humans share with all other It may also be much more than this. The last
life. Once a genetically engineered organism is re- eight lines of the poem hint at the speaker’s readi-
leased into the environment, for good or ill, it can ness to explore a counterintuitive method of deal-
never be recalled. ing with a negative, strength-sapping emotion such
as despair. Rather than fighting against it, which is
So, the speaker in Bass’s poem feels despair, the normal human instinct, the poet suggests ac-
and she feels it, the poem hints, not just for herself cepting it. Perhaps the belief that informs the poet
but also for the young, who must live with the at this point is that to fight against an emotion only
legacy of the previous generation’s mistakes. The has the effect of making it stronger; to accept it
images of childhood innocence—children playing lessens its grip. Embracing despair rather than run-
in the sand, babies sleeping in the arms of their ning from it therefore offers, paradoxically, a way
mother—add poignancy to the poet’s belief that na- beyond it. At least this is what the speaker seems
ture, which has sustained humanity throughout its to envision, although she does not actually take the
existence as a species, has now become the victim proposed step. Her thought remains at the stage of
of the humans it nourishes. It is as if the child has “what if”—an approach contemplated but not yet
turned on the mother and forgotten its filial oblig- taken. She clearly hopes, at some level of her be-
ations. This analogy is suggested by the recurring ing, that like a fairy tale in which the feared mon-
tender images of human mother and child. These ster turns into a charming prince, the emotion she
serve as an ironic commentary on the ruptured re- experiences as despair may turn out to be, once
lationship between Mother Nature and her human known and welcomed, no more substantial than a
children, which has been violated by the careless- cloud that temporarily hides the sun. For there is
ness and selfishness of the child. no doubt that this poem that begins in despair ends
with a startling image of serenity and happiness.
The speaker’s despair at humanity’s arrogance
and foolishness is not, many would say, surprising. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on “And What If I
She is not the first and will not be the last to feel Spoke of Despair,” in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003.
that way. What is perhaps surprising is her unusu-
ally passive, contemplative reaction to the ills she Sources
depicts. Many people who feel the way she appears
to feel take courage from action. They actively op- Bass, Ellen, “And What If I Spoke of Despair,” in Mules of
pose what they believe is wrong and encourage oth- Love, BOA Editions, 2002, pp. 78–79.
ers to do so as well. The poet’s attitude is quite
different. She ceases, it seems, to think further about Cummins, Ronnie, and Benn Lilleston, Genetically Engi-
what Mother Nature suffers at the hands of her chil- neered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers, Mar-
dren and returns to an exploration of the feeling of lowe, 2000, pp. 17, 59.
despair with which the poem began. Rather than ex-
amining the reasons why despair has appeared in

Volume 19 11

And What If I Spoke of Despair

Steinberg, Mark L., and Sharon D. Cosloy, The Facts on overview of how food is genetically engineered. The
File Dictionary of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, authors also examine the potential ethical and envi-
rev. ed., Checkmark Books, 2001. ronmental consequences of genetically engineered
food.
Yoon, C. K., “Altered Salmon Leading Way to Dinner Plates,
but Rules Lag,” in the New York Times, May 1, 2000, p. A1. Schor, Juliet, and Betsy Taylor, eds., Sustainable Planet:
Solutions for the Twenty-First Century, Beacon Press,
Further Reading 2003.

McGee, Glenn, ed., The Human Cloning Debate, 3d ed., Schor and Taylor, both involved administratively
Berkeley Hills Books, 2002. with the Center for a New American Dream (CNAD),
compile sixteen essays from a variety of environ-
First published after the 1997 cloning of the sheep mental commentators. The mission of CNAD is to
Dolly, this updated collection of essays outlines the protect the environment, enhance the quality of life,
major ethical issues involved in human cloning. It and promote social justice. Each essay offers sug-
also gives a comprehensive overview, in layperson’s gestions for how to achieve this goal.
terms, of the science involved in cloning.
Stock, Gregory, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Ge-
Nader, Ralph, and Martin Teitel, Genetically Engineered netic Future, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Food: Changing the Nature of Nature, 2d ed., Inner Tradi-
tions International, 2001. Stock is the director of the Program of Medicine,
Technology and Society for the School of Medicine
Nader, a well-known environmentalist and Green at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this
Party political candidate, and Teitel give a thorough book, Stock discusses his belief that the same genetic
engineering that is being used to redesign natural
foods like tomatoes will also be used to redesign hu-
mans at the genetic level.

12 Poetry for Students

The Boy

Marilyn Hacker’s poem “The Boy” first appeared Marilyn Hacker
in the Breadloaf Anthology of Contemporary Amer- 1999
ican Poetry in 1999 and is the opening poem in her
2000 collection, Squares and Courtyards. Written
in eight rhyming stanzas, the poem explores the
roles of gender, race, and writing in shaping iden-
tity. Hacker is known for her new formalist medi-
tations on history, womanhood, and the “stuff” of
everyday life. This poem addresses all three. As the
narrator imagines herself as a boy completing a
school assignment, the poet muses on the boy’s life,
his way of looking at the world, his relationship to
gender, and his own identity as a Jew. Part fantasy,
part character study, “The Boy” investigates the
fluidity of human identity, pokes at the boundaries
that separate one person’s life from another’s, and
interrogates the ways in which human beings are
called on to be one thing or another.

Hacker wrote the poem in response to a book
review by Robyn Selman in the Village Voice of
poem collections by Rafael Campo and Rachel Wezt-
steon. In the review, Selman describes the position
of the young male poet as someone who sits at a win-
dow and looks out at the world and the position of
the young female poet as someone who examines the
room in which she sits—the room of the self.

Author Biography

Editor, translator, and teacher, Marilyn Hacker is
also one of the most sophisticated poets writing in

13

The Boy

Marilyn Hacker ing openly as a lesbian since the late 1970s, Hacker
has also made her poetry the place in which she ex-
America today. Known for the acuteness of her ob- plores questions of identity, particularly how the
servations as well as her formal inventiveness, self is fashioned through discourses of sexuality,
Hacker creates tight, elaborate poems that have the gender, class, and ethnicity.
quality of sculpture. Hacker’s poems stand out for
their craft and intelligence. In addition to the National Book Award,
Hacker has received a number of other awards for
Hacker was born November 27, 1942, to busi- her poetry including a New York Poetry Center
ness consultant Albert Abraham Hacker and Discovery Award in 1973, the Jenny McKean
teacher Hilda Rosengarten Hacker, both Jewish im- Moore Fellowship, 1976–1977, and fellowships
migrants. She grew up in the Bronx, graduating from the Guggenheim Foundation, 1980–1981, the
from the Bronx School of Science and enrolling in National Endowment for the Arts, 1985, and the
New York University at the age of fifteen. In 1961, Ingram Merrill Foundation, 1985. She has also won
she married novelist Samuel R. Delany. From 1969 a Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall
to 1971, they edited Quark: A Quarterly of Specu- Award from the Nation and the Academy of Amer-
lative Fiction. This was the first of many editorial ican Poets for Winter Numbers in 1995. In 1996,
positions she would hold. Hacker graduated from Hacker won The Poet’s Prize for Selected Poems.
New York University in 1964. In 1974, she and Hacker has two books due to be published in 2003:
Delaney separated. She Says, a translated collection of Venus Khoury-
Ghata’s poems in a bilingual edition, and Hacker’s
Hacker’s first collection of poems, Presenta- own collection, Desesperanto: Poems 1999–2002.
tion Piece, published in 1974, was a Lamont Po- “The Boy” appears in Hacker’s Squares and Court-
etry Selection and won the National Book Award yards (2000).
in 1975. Critics lauded her deft handling of com-
plicated subject matter and the original manner in In addition to the praise she receives for her
which she interwove personal and political themes. writing, Hacker is also highly respected for her work
With her next book, Separations (1976), Hacker es- with literary magazines, having served as editor for
tablished herself as a master of traditional forms, Little Magazine, 13th Moon, Kenyon Review, and a
such as the sestina, villanelle, and pantoum, and as special issue of Ploughshares. Hacker has also di-
one of the best younger American poets alive. Liv- rected the masters program in English Literature and
creative writing at City College of New York.

Poem Text

14 Poetry for Students

The Boy

Media
Adaptations

• Caedmon released an audiocassette titled Poetry
& Voice of Marilyn Hacker (1984) with Hacker
reading a selection of her poems.

Poem Summary Stanza 4

Stanza 1 The speaker continues attempting to describe
the character of the boy inside her, who resembles
In the first stanza of “The Boy,” the narrator someone on the edge of puberty. That he is “un-
questions who it is looking out the window. “The marked” does not mean that he is “neutered,” or
boy in me” suggests another identity, or way of see- without sexuality, but rather that he feels himself
ing, of which the narrator is becoming aware. The in the moment sexually undefined, ungendered. He
gender of the narrator is not clear at this point. What experiences a moment of self-awareness when the
is clear is the assumption that one’s gender influ- boys in the park taunt him, calling him “Jew!”
ences the way that one sees the world, the things
to which one pays attention. Stanza 5

Stanza 2 In this stanza, the speaker describes the book
the boy in her (who is making observations and
In this stanza, the narrator continues question- writing a story) read about World War II. “Parti-
ing the gender of the boy inside her, wondering if sans” refer to the organized resistance to Nazi oc-
he would have responded differently to his taunters cupation. The speaker makes the point that the story
“if he were a girl.” The last line alerts readers to of the war contains a warning, but the nature of the
the fact that the narrator is in the process of com- warning is unclear. It is a “code” to the young boy,
posing a piece of writing, possibly a school exer- who is just learning what it means to be a boy and
cise on a fairy tale or book about World War II. a Jew.

Stanza 3 Stanza 6

The poem becomes more transparently self- This stanza describes the boy’s appearance.
reflexive in this stanza. That is, the boy mentioned “They” refers to the Nazis, and the “thing” they
in the opening stanza is now the one crossing out know is that the boy is Jewish.
words in the second. The “homework” he is doing
includes writing the words, “the rain, the linen- Stanza 7
mender,” which refer to the images in the first
stanza. The last sentence runs over into the next In asking if the partisans have sons or grand-
stanza and explicitly states what the previous parents in “his story,” the speaker is speculating
stanzas have illustrated: the boy’s dawning aware- about the story the boy (who is an alter ego of the
ness of what it means to be a boy. “The absence speaker) is writing. The speaker wonders which
. . . of gender” refers to the way that the young boy identity, Jewish or male, is stronger.
is not aware of himself as a boy, and “the privilege
of gender” refers to the ways in which boys, as Stanza 8
opposed to girls, often do not have to think of them-
selves as boys but are nonetheless socially re- This stanza returns to the image of the boy
warded for simply being male. looking out the window in the first stanza. The per-
son “who’ll never be a man” is the speaker speak-
ing as the poet (i.e., Marilyn Hacker), referring to
herself as a boy and in the third person. The boy’s

Volume 19 15

The Boy

Topics for
Further
Study

• As a class, construct a time line of events con- and then list five descriptive phrases you would
cerning the plight of Jews in Europe in 1942 and like a member of the same sex to use to describe
post it in class. Could something like the Holo- you. To what degree is what you would like to
caust ever happen again? Discuss your answers hear from a member of your own sex similar or
as a class. different from what you would like to hear from
a member of the opposite sex? What do these sim-
• In groups, collect ads from the personals section ilarities and differences say about how you view
of your local newspaper or from an online site yourself as a man or a woman? Discuss as a class.
such as Yahoo. Analyze the language men use
to describe themselves and what they want in a • Make a list of all the times when you are most
partner. Then, analyze the language women use aware that you are a man or a woman and all
to describe themselves and what they want in a the times when you are least aware. What do
partner. Make a chart outlining the similarities these lists tell you about the idea of gender as a
and differences in both self-representation and category of identity? Discuss in groups.
representation of the desired partner. What does
your analysis tell you about how men and • Compare the image of the schoolgirl gazing out
women see themselves? What gender stereo- the window in Hacker’s poem “Squares and
types do the ads illustrate? Courtyards” with the image of the boy in “The
Boy.” Discuss similarities and differences and
• List five descriptive phrases you would like a what these depictions say about the importance
member of the opposite sex to use to describe you of the image of the child in Hacker’s poetry.

last act in the poem is crossing something out that between imagined selves, and offers readers a way
he just wrote. to consider their own relationship to the outside
world and to their own identities.
Themes
Writing
Chaos and Order
Hacker demonstrates the power of writing to
Puberty is a chaotic time, full of powerful and do more than simply record the details of the phys-
new emotions, bodily changes, and self-reflection. ical world; she uses it as a tool to investigate the
“The Boy” describes someone in the midst of such social construction of gender and ethnicity. Social
changes, which include a budding awareness of the constructionism is a school of thought that claims
boy’s sexuality and cultural identity. The boy, how- categories such as gender (masculine/feminine) and
ever, is also in someone else, who is similarly ques- sexuality (hetero/homo) stem from cultural influ-
tioning her identity, testing the limits of her own ences and not from essential features of a person’s
self-reflection. The “twinning” of these two per- biology or psychology. By assuming the character
sonas creates a challenging poem for readers, es- of a young boy just coming into knowledge of what
pecially beginning poetry readers, to comprehend. it means to be a boy and Jewish, Hacker also as-
One device that helps readers is the order of the sumes how the boy sees and interprets his envi-
poem—the regular meter and consistent rhyme ronment. She tempers her description of his
scheme. The form of the poem helps shape and con- appearance (“He has short hair, a red sweatshirt”)
tain the whorl of changing pronouns, the movement with speculation about his history (“In his story, do
the partisans / have sons? Have grandparents?”),
underscoring his future as possibility rather than

16 Poetry for Students

The Boy

destiny. The shifting pronouns in the poem and the Characterization
boy’s constant revision of his writing highlight the
speaker’s identification with the boy’s way of Characterization refers to the ways in which po-
knowing and seeing and emphasizes the fluidity of ets and writers develop characters. Techniques in-
gender roles. Social constructionism is heavily in- clude describing characters’ physical appearance,
fluenced by anthropological cultural relativism, the way they behave and talk, and how they think.
and its roots can be found in the thinking of post- Hacker creates the character of the boy largely
modernists such as Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, through describing his thought processes and
and Michel Foucault. through melding those thought processes with those
of the narrator. The physical description of the boy,
Gender “He has short hair, a red sweatshirt,” is minimal but,
along with the way he responds to others who taunt
Hacker wrote her poem at the end of the twen- him and how he begins to ponder his own cultural
tieth century when human identity is a question to and ethnic heritage, it contributes to creating an im-
be explored rather than a problem to be solved. Tra- age of a boy just coming into knowledge about him-
ditional categories of identity such as race and gen- self and his place in history and the world.
der are no longer as stable as they once appeared
to be. In America, sex-change operations are in- Historical Context
creasingly common, more states recognize same-
sex unions, and scientists argue that at root there is End of the Twentieth Century
no real distinction among the races. University pro-
grams in gender studies, which draw on feminist Hacker wrote “The Boy” in the spring of 1999,
scholarship but also study masculinity in histori- when Israel and the Palestinian Authority were still
cally specific ways, are gaining in popularity, and engaged in the Oslo peace talks with the United
many of the assumptions that people once had States acting as facilitator. The talks ended in the
about the psychological and biological roots of gen- summer of 2000 with the sides unable to agree on
der are being challenged and disproved. The boy a framework for peace. In September, Knesset
in the speaker is both a product of the speaker’s member and Likud party leader Ariel Sharon vis-
imagination and a reflection of a part of herself that ited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, home of the
she is exercising. The melding of the speaker’s and al-Aqsa Mosque and the third holiest site in Islam.
the boy’s identity in the last stanza illustrates the Muslims believe Temple Mount is where the
mysterious nature of gender. prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. It is also
a holy place for Jews, who believe it is where Abra-
Style ham prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Sharon’s
visit provoked massive protests by Palestinians,
Rhyme who considered Sharon’s visit a desecration of the
site. The ensuing violent demonstrations by Pales-
With the exception of the second stanza, “The tinians became known as the “al-Aqsa intifada.”
Boy” is composed of quatrains rhyming ABAB The uprising has developed into the worst period
written in iambic pentameter. The second stanza is of violence in Israel’s history, with the exception
rhymed AABAB. Some of the rhymes are “true” of periods of warfare with neighboring Arab coun-
rhymes, meaning there is an identical sound of an tries. Hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis have
accented vowel in two or more words (e.g., “gen- been killed since 2000 in Palestinian suicide bomb-
der / linen-mender”), and some of the rhymes are ings, border clashes, and Israeli missile attacks on
half-rhymes, meaning the consonants in the termi- suspected terrorists. Four months after his visit,
nal syllables rhyme, as in “cigarette / street.” Iambic Sharon was elected Prime Minister, roundly de-
pentameter quatrains rhyming ABAB are some- feating incumbent Ehud Barak.
times called “elegiac” quatrains, after Thomas
Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Partly as a result of the media’s coverage of
Writing in a traditional rhymed verse form is not Israel’s policy towards Palestinians, anti-Semitic
common for contemporary American poets, the bulk attitudes in the United States persist. Anti-Semitic
of whom write in a conversational, free-verse style. incidents have increased in the United States in the
Hacker is one of the very few living American po- last decade, as attacks against Jews and Jewish in-
ets who is noted for writing in traditional forms. stitutions were up 11 percent in the first five months
of 2002, compared with the same period in 2001,

Volume 19 17

The Boy

according to a nationwide survey by the Anti- pect of transiency.” Cameron points out the in-
Defamation League, “Anti-Semitism in America tensely personal nature of the poems, how their sub-
2002.” The survey also found that 17 percent of jects come straight from Hacker’s own experience
Americans held “hardcore” anti-Semitic views. The battling breast cancer, losing friends to AIDS, and
findings indicate a reversal of a ten-year decline in remembering victims of the Holocaust. “The poet
anti-Semitism and raise concerns that “an under- both fights and celebrates the flux, Cameron writes,
current of Jewish hatred persists in America.” “as if from a deep understanding that life and death
cannot be separated.”
1942
Criticism
Although “The Boy” has a contemporary set-
ting, the speaker mentions 1942, when being a Jew Chris Semansky
in certain parts of Europe could get one killed. Al-
though the Nazis had been deporting Jews from Semansky’s essays and reviews appear regu-
Germany and Bohemia since 1939, it was not un- larly in journals and newspapers. In this essay,
til 1941 that they began building death camps, de- Semansky considers ideas of identity in Hacker’s
veloping gassing techniques, and organizing the poem.
evacuation system that was to take European Jews
to their deaths. Under the orders of Adolph Eich- Human beings are not “essentially” female or
mann, Chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo male in any kind of set manner. Rather they be-
charged with implementing the “Final Solution,” come aware of their gendered identity in specific
hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over Eu- situations, when they are called upon to behave or
rope were forcibly brought to camps in places such think in a particular way, or when certain words
as Sobibor, a small town a few miles from Poland’s position them as male or female. Hacker’s poem
eastern border. Between April 1942 and October explores the territory of gender and self-recogni-
1943, approximately 250,000 Jews were gassed to tion, as its narrator inhabits one gender, then an-
death there. All told, more than six million Jews other, in response to the words and worlds in which
were slaughtered in Nazi death camps during she finds herself.
World War II.
It seems natural to categorize people accord-
Critical Overview ing to their sex, and one commonly hears state-
ments describing certain kinds of behavior as
Squares and Courtyards has garnered considerable “male” or “female.” Indeed, conventional feminism
praise in the short time that it has been in publica- is rooted in the notion that all women share some-
tion. Reviewing the collection for The Progressive, thing that sets them apart from men. It is this
Matthew Rothschild writes, “Elegant in form, ca- “something” that sanctions much feminist political
sual and observational in style, these poems wrap activity and helps to create the notion that gender
themselves around large themes: death, friendship, is a fixed, rather than a constructed, category. In
parents’ and children, Nazism, sex, nature, empire.” her essay, “Sexual Difference and the Problem of
Although the poems address emotionally heavy sub- Essentialism,” theorist Elizabeth Grosz sums up
jects, they are not anchored there. “What is re- this “something,” which she calls essentialism, as
demptive here,” Rothschild says, “is Hacker’s follows:
devotion to words, friends, food, and nature.” Ray
Olson is similarly admiring in his review for Book- Essentialism . . . refers to the attribution of a fixed
list. Olson zeroes in on Hacker’s concern with death essence to women. . . . Essentialism entails the belief
in the poems, claiming that the collection “is a book that those characteristics defined as women’s essence
of midlife” that midlife poetry readers will espe- are shared in common by all women at all times. . . .
cially appreciate. Olson lauds Hacker’s keen skills Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed char-
of observation, noting, “how she and her peers re- acteristics, given attributes, and ahistorical functions.
act to the crises death imposes on them.” In her re-
view for Prairie Schooner, Esther Cameron also “The Boy” attempts to debunk the notion that
notes the prevalence of death in Hacker’s poems, human beings have an essentially masculine or
writing, “[The] collection is written under the as- feminine essence, by showing how the narrator
changes in relation to the circumstances and dis-
courses in which she finds herself. She not only re-
sponds to the world, but, as a writer, she is actively

18 Poetry for Students

The Boy

engaged in creating that world through her words Hacker’s exploration
and her imagination. She writes her poem “as if” a of the space of gender takes
boy, living inside the head of a boy who, himself, place in her imagination
is only intermittently aware of his “boyness.” Gen- and in her writing, which
der, then, in Hacker’s poem, is more an act of the are indistinguishable.”
imagination than it is a fixed point of identity wait-
ing to be accessed. etry and Politics,” Hacker says this about other in-
tersections in the poem:
The idea of gender as something that floats
rather than something that is fixed is obvious in the “The Boy” began as a mental conversation with a
first line of the poem, when the narrator asks, “Is poet-critic friend, who, in an essay, posited the stance
it the boy in me who’s looking out / the window of the young woman poet as “examining the room
. . . ?” If the boy is in the narrator, what does this she’s sitting in” where the young male poet is look-
say about the narrator’s identity? It is unclear and ing out the window . . . The “boy in me” who was
that is the point. Certainty itself, in relation to hu- indeed looking out the window as he/I wrote, re-
man identity, is a fantasy, a vestige of a fading or- sponded to her essay. But, although the questions of
der that imposes categories on people to better Jewish identity as inflecting masculinity become cen-
understand and control them. tral to the poem, as the old saw goes, “I didn’t know
he was Jewish”—at least, not until I was well into
In the next stanza, the narrator continues with writing it.
the process of self-interrogation, this time propos-
ing a “what if” scenario for the “boy inside.” What Hacker emphasizes the differences between
if, the boy thinks, he were a girl, because he did not how a male poet might look at the world and how
have the guts to face his accusers who hurled epi- a female poet might. Hacker’s friend presents male
thets at him? This kind of reasoning is based upon poets as concerned with the world outside of them,
gender stereotypes: a real man would defend him- the physical world. This is what the first stanza de-
self and challenge his accusers; only a “girl” would scribes—things seen from a window. In claiming
turn away from them. The boy is struggling not only that a young woman poet is prone to “examining
to understand his own behavior but also to write, the room she’s sitting in,” the friend suggests not
penning a line and then crossing it out. In the very only that women’s attention is drawn to their im-
next stanza, the poem moves out of the mental space mediate vicinity but also that they are more inner-
of the boy and into that of the narrator. directed, more apt to use their bodies and emotions,
their images of themselves as subjects for their po-
Hacker’s exploration of the space of gender ems. The “room she’s sitting in” is the room of the
takes place in her imagination and in her writing, self. These are stereotypes, of course, of certain
which are indistinguishable. A writer’s imagination kinds of gendered thinking, but they are stereotypes
is necessarily in her writing; where else could it that Hacker fruitfully explores to craft her poem.
be? That is why the “boy inside” the narrator is the The poem is surprising because Hacker herself was
persona the poet inhabits. This is where the poem surprised when writing it, as she notes above. This
becomes tricky. A persona is a kind of mask the is a common occurrence for writers, as characters
writer uses to speak through. Say, for example, you often take on a life of their own once put down on
put on a mask of George W. Bush and then give a paper. In an email to the author dated January 11,
speech to the American people about terrorism. 2003, Hacker details how she came to the first im-
You would be inhabiting (or trying to) his identity ages of the poem:
to do this; you would be speaking as if you were
George Bush, using his intonations, vocabulary, de- “The Boy” was written in my flat in . . . Paris, where
scribing the world the way you believe George my worktable faces a window with a vis à vis, be-
Bush sees it, etc. In some ways, writers always use yond which the lives of the people living opposite,
a persona, even when they are writing autobio- framed by door-sized windows, go on more or less
graphically. before my eyes, as mine does before theirs. A school-
child doing homework in one of those flats would
“The Boy” resonates more loudly if readers
also know that Hacker is both lesbian and Jewish,
as these identities inflect the others she tries on in
the course of the poem. In a panel discussion hosted
by the Poetry Society of America and later tran-
scribed as the online essay, “Poetry Criticism: Po-

Volume 19 19

The Boy

face me as I’d face him or her. But there is no such the poet’s ability to touch upon gender confusion,
child; it was I who watched the elderly widow (I think bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism in such a small
she’s a widow) with the enormous rubber plant in her amount of space. The reader is hit with these is-
front room sitting at the window hemming a pillow- sues on a number of simultaneous fronts.
case that day, while her young neighbor-on-the-land-
ing leaned out the window with a lit cigarette, To begin with, the identity and gender of the
watching the street. narrator in “The Boy” is murky, at best. Two dif-
ferent interpretations work in the poem’s favor,
Hacker’s willingness to imagine herself as even though the outcomes suggest slightly differ-
other than what she is demonstrates a quality of ent issues. It does not matter. In both cases, the nar-
imagination rare in today’s poets, who often be- rator is struggling with his or her sense of being
come stuck on one way of seeing. At root, “The different from the mainstream world and trying to
Boy” is as much about the relationship between nail down an identity.
personal risk and poetic capital as it is about the
slippery ground of subjectivity. In fashioning a The understood interpretation of the poem as-
poem that takes readers through the poet’s process sumes a female narrator. If the reader decides that
of self-discovery, Hacker shows how readers, as this is a poem about a lesbian woman, then it makes
well as writers, participate in constructing (and re- sense. But, the reader must work for this conclu-
constructing) conventions of personhood. sion, amidst the confusion of the narrator and
Hacker’s clever mechanics. This is a poem that
Personhood, memory, and the language of be- takes some thought to unravel.
coming are subjects Hacker frequently addresses in
Squares and Courtyards, and the image of a child The first stanza, then, might be interpreted as
at the window contemplating the world appears a lesbian narrator, acknowledging the “maleness”
again, in the last stanza of the title poem, this time within herself. Even as early as this first line, one is
as a young girl. given the sense of separateness and division. The male
part of the narrator is “within” and “looking out.”
Not knowing what to thank or whom to bless,
the schoolgirl at the window, whom I’m not, Hacker further accentuates the narrator’s sep-
hums cadences it soothes her to repeat arateness from the rest of the world in the first
which open into other languages stanza. Across the street, others are engaging in in-
in which she’ll piece together sentences nocuous, non-risky, everyday behaviors. Depend-
while I imagine her across the street. ing on how deeply one searches for subtleties in
this poem, the word “shift” might also be seen as
Hacker is both the schoolboy and the school- significant. This narrator seems to be walking a
girl, and is neither. Her capacity to write herself in shifting line of gender identity, as a woman with
and out of the world of others is her poetic gift, one the essence of a boy inside of her. The entire first
she uses to share with readers the shape of her life, stanza ends with a question mark, making the nar-
the shape of experience itself. rator’s shifting gender identity much more inter-
esting than if she had started out by saying “It is
Source: Chris Semansky, Critical Essay on “The Boy,” in the boy in me.” What part of this character is look-
Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003. ing out the window, the male or the female essence?

Catherine Dybiec Holm The second stanza completely turns the tables.
Here, the narrator refers to herself as the boy and
Holm is a freelance writer with speculative fic- actually recalls a painful incident of discrimination.
tion and nonfiction publications. In this essay, Perhaps the most intriguing line in this stanza is the
Holm notes the rich combination of narrative us- fourth line: “he briefly wonders—if he were a girl.”
age, allusion, word play, and mechanics that The confusion of the narrator has been expressed.
Hacker uses to drive home the subject matter of She refers to herself as “he” and wonders, “if he
this poem. were a girl.” If the boy were a girl, would the dis-
crimination happen less often? Another way to say
Hacker, a lesbian, feminist, and Jewish poet, this might be if the narrator has less of that “boy”
has no doubt experienced in her lifetime the os- inside herself, would the discrimination occur less?
tracism that comes from being a minority or ex- Maybe the purpose of that fourth line is simply to
pressing a minority viewpoint on a number of show readers the truly wild experience of gender
fronts. In Hacker’s powerful and heartrending confusion. This character is neither boy nor girl,
poem “The Boy,” the poet uses poetry-specific me- yet is both. Symbolically, the fifth line of the sec-
chanics as well as narrative craft to hammer home
the pain of being different and being apart from the
majority. What is most amazing about this poem is

20 Poetry for Students

The Boy

ond stanza is another powerful remark about gen- Perhaps what Hacker
der confusion. He creates something. He takes it is saying is that it does not
away. It is the ultimate in transformation or de- matter whether the narrator
struction—bringing something into being and then is male or female. The
erasing it. narrator simply is and is
struggling to understand an
The third stanza of “The Boy” shifts back into identity that shifts and
first person point of view, as at the beginning of encompasses more than the
the poem. The first line in this stanza (“I’ll never commonplace world might
be a man, but there’s a boy”) tells us that the nar- be ready to understand.”
rator cannot be a man, yet she acknowledges the
undisputed male presence within herself. “Cross- point of view finishes off the poem. Again, the nar-
ing out words” in the second line refers back to the rator demonstrates indecision (by writing some-
original mention of writing and crossing out lines. thing, then crossing it out), but, more importantly,
On a deeper level, the word “crossing” alludes to the narrator shows deconstruction. The sentence
crossing boundaries, or existing in such a way as ends with the word “out,” an allusion to coming
this narrator does. Regarding these activities as out as a gay or lesbian person in society. Truly, this
“homework” is as close as the narrator can get to narrator is a completely deconstructed person who
participating in day-to-day activities like linen- asks, throughout the poem, How do I consider my-
mending, and Hacker states it baldly in the fourth self? Am I boy? Am I Jew? What am I? None of
line of this stanza (“The absence and the privilege the usual rules of gender apply; this is the crux of
of gender”). In other words, those with clearly de- the message of “The Boy.”
fined gender identities have the “privilege” of a
well-ordered world and mundane, usual happen- A different, but no less effective, interpretation
ings. The narrator is a person with an “absence of of this poem might assume that the narrator is a
gender,” a stunning concept in itself and made even self-acknowledged homosexual male. Reading the
more stunning by the stark economy of words that poem this way still gives the reader the layers of
a poem demands. complexity that are so prevalent in this poem. The
“boy in me” can be taken to represent the narra-
Hacker continues to dig deeper into this con- tor’s inner essence, the part of him that will always
cept; the narrator is not “neuter,” but a “neutral hu- be male even though society will never consider
man.” The “fairy tale” is never identified, but the him a “man.” When the narrator briefly wonders
phrase is a thinly veiled reference to a derogatory “if he were a girl,” the phrase takes on a new mean-
remark aimed at a homosexual (“fairy”). Then, as ing coming from a gay male narrator. If he were a
if this were not enough, the narrator is insulted for girl, would he be teased in such a manner? He car-
his heritage and taunted by boys who shout “Jew!” ries that essence of femininity inside him, just as
surely as the female narrator (if interpreted in that
In the seventh stanza, “His story” is an inten- way) carries “a boy” inside of her.
tional word play on “history” (“In his story, do the
partisans / have sons?”) The word “partisan” could Perhaps what Hacker is saying is that it does
be taken to allude to two situations that both affect not matter whether the narrator is male or female.
this narrator: those who stood for one ideal during The narrator simply is and is struggling to under-
World War II, or those who hold strong, unmov- stand an identity that shifts and encompasses more
able beliefs in the narrator’s present-day life. “Par- than the commonplace world might be ready to un-
tisan” implies a strong belief or focus on one derstand. By presenting readers with an ambiguous
identifiable system, whereas this narrator, because narrator, Hacker effectively shows them what it is
of who she or he is, lives life in a shifting under-
standing of gender identity, which does not neces-
sarily follow previously established rules. The
narrator is struggling to get to the crux of his iden-
tity (“Is he a Jew / more than he is a boy, who’ll
be a man / someday?”) Both are sources of dis-
crimination, but which define the narrator more?

The last stanza seems to return to the begin-
ning of the poem (the narrator is looking out the
window), but now the more distant third person

Volume 19 21

The Boy

like to live with a shifting self-identity that fits no mastectomy, chemotherapy, a body no longer
accepted rules. whole, the fear of recurrence, the waking up to the
“scandal” of death; also the illnesses and deaths of
Hacker plays with form and meter in “The relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers: other
Boy” though it is difficult to say whether the pat- sufferers from cancer in the poet’s circle, the vic-
terns presented are significant in the context of this tims of AIDS and drugs cared for by her lover, the
poem. Most stanzas have an ABAB pattern, mean- poet’s daughter’s best friend in a car crash, the
ing that the ending syllables of the first and third poet’s grandmother in a pedestrian accident long
lines of the stanza sound similar to each other, as ago, the victims of the Holocaust and World War
do those in the second and fourth lines. The ex- II, a vital elderly friend, a revered older poet
ception to this pattern is the second stanza, which (Muriel Rukeyser), a homeless man whose funeral
has five lines and an AABAB pattern. This is also is described. Geographical transiency also pervades
the stanza that first throws readers into new terri- the book: the poet lives half in New York, half in
tory; one starts to realize that there is a lot more Paris, and at one point settled in Ohio, only to be
going on here than the original picture of a char- abruptly uprooted after starting a garden. The poem
acter looking out the window. Perhaps this devia- that relates this event, “Tentative Gardening,” also
tion from pattern, and the addition of an extra line laments the brevity of the connection with Nadine
in this stanza, are meant to jar us as much as does who had supervised the planting: “and I wonder
the meaning of the text. where and from whom I’ll learn to / put in a gar-
den.” Friends fade out in the transcontinental shuf-
Similarly, with no discernible pattern, Hacker fle; strangers (like the schoolgirls in “Rue de
alternates lines of iambic pentameter with lines that Belleyme”) appear as vivid images, give rise to
vary from this pattern. The first two lines of the equally vivid speculations about their lives, and
poem are in iambic pentameter. The third line of move offscreen again. One of the central poems—
the poem is also iambic pentameter, with an extra “Again in the River”—shows the poet sitting be-
unstressed syllable at the end of the line. The third side the Seine; the book might have had for a motto
stanza’s second line starts out with an initial in- Heraclitus’s “All things are in flux.”
version of iambic pentameter, and then goes into
iambic pentameter with another feminine ending. The poet both fights and celebrates the flux, as
Two lines down, the line that ends with “gender” if from a deep understanding that life and death
also ends with a feminine ending (the extra un- cannot be separated. One strategy against the flux
stressed syllable), perhaps an intended irony for the is, of course, form: “I will put Chaos into fourteen
reader to unearth. These inversions and variations lines / And keep him there,” as Millay wrote.
on iambic pentameter may work to keep readers Hacker is one of the masters of form of the age,
from getting too comfortable or grounded as they and once again she proves her dexterity with the
read the poem. sonnet, the crown of sonnets, terza rima, sapphics.
All the poems in the book are rhymed, except for
In a Ploughshares interview, Hacker is de- a set of haiku, but the rhymes are so discreetly
scribed as gloriously defying “all attempts at easy worked into the text that one can fail to notice them.
categorization.” A Publishers Weekly review praises A particular pleasure is the way exact and off-
the poet’s “strength of will with an evenness of tone” rhymes are blended without awkwardness, as in the
and claims that Hacker is “at her strongest when final sonnet of “Taking Leave of Zenka,” where the
most stark and direct.” Surely, “The Boy” is all these rhymes are: wound/ interred/ bird/ around/ beyond/
things, which is entirely appropriate given its sub- blurred/ shirred/ friend/ son/ floor/ rudiments/more/
ject matter: shocking, skillfully rendered, and not France/afternoon. The meter, with varying degrees
easily pinned down. of rigidity, manages to be equally unobtrusive. The
closing of the formal circle comes each time as a
Source: Catherine Dybiec Holm, Critical Essay on “The victory over the dissolving stream.
Boy,” in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003.
Another strategy for chaos control is the sharp
Esther Cameron focus on the particular: “as if dailiness forestalled
change.” There is a constant invocation of “inno-
In the following review, Cameron discusses the cent objects”: “a tin plate, a basement / door, a
themes of transience found in Hacker’s collection spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys,” cherries in an
Squares and Courtyards. outdoor market (six varieties), a dog’s coat, “spiced
pumpkin soup,” “Tissue-wrapped clementines /
Marilyn Hacker’s ninth collection is written
under the aspect of transiency. Reflected in the po-
ems are the realities of a breast cancer diagnosis,

22 Poetry for Students

The Boy

from Morocco,” the sci-fi paperback a homeless The poet both fights
man is reading. By fixing the names of these ob- and celebrates the flux, as if
jects in the sound-texture (always rich and bristling) from a deep understanding
of the verse, the poet reaffirms the fact of her exis- that life and death cannot
tence, and the existence of her friends and fellow- be separated. One strategy
sufferers and all the displaced, here and now and against the flux is, of
again in that ghostly semblance of permanence that course, form. . . .”
the text gives (“Persistently, on paper, we exist”).
dow is perhaps the reader, who will try in her own
But of course objects like a spade and barbed way to realize the aspirations that were the poet’s:
wire are not innocent. Neither are the cherries, as “thinking: she can, if anybody could.”
it turns out (they lead to birds, then to the yellow
bird whistle, which the poet’s grandmother had just This conclusion is of course not reassuring.
bought for her at the moment of that long-ago fa- What is in store for the schoolgirl: “Is there a yel-
tal accident). Objects have associations that take low star sewn on her dress”? Moreover, the school-
one elsewhere in space and time, and the movement girl may not even exist; the conversation between
of the poem as a whole often seems to be deter- the poet and the schoolgirl is only imagined. In
mined by free association, by the stream of con- “Again, the River” the poet will ask: “Who do we
sciousness. Thus in the title poem, “Squares and write books for—our friends? our daughters?,” thus
Courtyards” (which received Prairie Schooner’s questioning (as many have recently) the existence
Strousse Award in 1998) the poet is at first stand- of poetry’s audience; and the question takes on a
ing in the Place du Marche Sainte-Catherine, eat- further edge from the reminder in “Squares and
ing a baguette. She sees (or imagines?) a schoolgirl Courtyards” that a poet’s kith and kin are under no
chewing on a pencil at a window. She thinks back obligation to find her words helpful or meaningful.
to her own childhood, the courtyard of the house in And while the figure at the window may still dream,
New York where she grew up. By a train of asso- the poet has found out that she will “get old (or
ciation involving discussions of Holocaust news, not) and die”—and also, by implication, that she
ashes, chain smokers, she is drawn back to a side- “can” not, because no one “could.”
walk cafe on the Place du Marche Sainte-Cather-
ine, where people are smoking and discussing So the poem becomes a repeated grasping af-
personal and political events “as if events were ours ter what slips away, and the book as a whole be-
to rearrange / with words[. .].” Then back to her comes an assemblage of images that at times seem
own childhood, her early experience with languages less woven together than retained in juxtaposition
and language: “I pressed my face into the dog’s on account of accidental collisions that marked the
warm fur / whose heat and smell I learned by heart, reporting self (like that terrible childhood accident
while she / receded into words I found for her.” that surfaces toward the end of the book, as if it
Then into a meditation about how words replace were a kind of explanation for everything). No ab-
things, give an illusion of summing them up, cre- stract meaning could subsume these details; that
ate expectations that reality declines to fulfill, and would go against the poet’s fierce assertion of the
yet themselves represent a reality that can be lost, unrepeatable uniqueness of each instant, each ob-
as in the case of the grandmother (“It’s all the words ject, each person, as against the great void of noth-
she said to me I miss”). Then come questions about ingness and death. There is an anti-hierarchical
the languages of the poet’s parents and grandpar- insistence in the individual portraits of street peo-
ents. Finally the poet (who seemed to be alone at ple, which a structure of symbol, myth, archetype
the beginning of the poem) appears to be speaking would only gloss over. But as a result, form too
with a “she” (a friend? a daughter? a double?) who comes to seem permeable. The “squares and court-
“walks home / across the Place du Marche Ste- yards” of the poems, like the past and present
Catherine.” Once in her own room, this figure will
“scribble down” the “cognates, questions, and
parentheses” and become the imagined figure of
“the schoolgirl at the window, whom I’m not.” The
poem’s movement implies that the poet is only one
vessel, so to speak, for a stream of language, con-
sciousness, thought, which will pass through her to
others. The final figure of the schoolgirl in the win-

Volume 19 23

The Boy

What comes to seem like a single poem, a sign that
Do I Read Hacker has achieved, despite all the apparent frag-
mentation, a texture in which the details are, finally,
Next? at home. The associative flow dissolves the con-
tour of individual poems, as it dissolves the poet’s
• Hacker has developed a reputation as a lesbian sense of being wholly at any point in spacetime;
activist sympathetic to the plight of oppressed mi- but it also connects the different points in space-
norities. Dorothy Allison, who has also written time, pulls them together and makes them part of
about lesbianism, published Bastard out of Car- the Now: “Every- / place / is Here and is Today,”
olina in 1992. This autobiographical novel tells as Paul Celan wrote in The No-One’s-Rose.
the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright (“Bone”), who
was raised in a family of poor Southern whites Here and there a passage raises different ques-
and molested by her violent stepfather. tions. “Broceliande” harks back to an early inter-
est in mythmaking and magic that is largely
• Hacker’s Selected Poems, 1965–1990 (1995) submerged here: “Yes, there is a vault in the ru-
contains selections from from five of her previ- ined castle. / Yes, there is a woman waking beside
ous volumes and contains much of her best the / gleaming sword she drew from the stone of
work, including some of her best-known son- childhood.” But this ironic compliance with a re-
nets, sestinas, and villanelles. quest for symbolism is soon deflated altogether:
“Sometimes she inhabits the spiring cities / archi-
• Hacker’s first collection of poems, Presentation tects project out of science fiction / dreams, but she
Piece (1974), was a Lamont Poetry Selection and illuminates them with different / voyages, visions:
won the National Book Award in 1975. It remains // with tomato plants, with the cat who answers /
one of her most accomplished volumes to date. when he’s called, with music-hall lyrics, work-
scarred hands on a steering wheel, the jeweled se-
• Sheep Meadow Press published a bilingual edi- cret / name of a lover.” Again we are told that there
tion of Long Gone Sun (2000), which is a col- are no great symbols, only the things that have
lection of poems written by French poet Claire meant most to one person and what those things
Malroux and translated by Hacker. This collec- tell us about that person, as a lover and activist. At
tioin is about Malroux’s childhood and her fa- the same time, the mythical world that has been in-
ther’s life in the French Resistance. voked imbues these particular particulars with a
slight magical aura: is the cat a familiar, is the jew-
• Hacker edited the Spring 1996 issue of Plough- eled secret name a charm? One thinks here of the
shares, which focuses on literary, gender, and powerful “Rune of the Finland Woman” in As-
racial diversity in contemporary American poetry. sumptions (1985), or that early, splendid sestina,
“An Alexandrite Pendant for My Mother,” which
moment, are not closed-off spaces but just eddies didn’t even make it into Selected Poems 1965–
in the flow, nodes in the network. The traditional 1990. One wonders if myth could return to poetic
sonnet starts something and then finishes it, stands universe. Myth is after all an organizing device, a
there as a Gestalt with a clear outline within which source of power; don’t the dispossessed need it too?
the details are balanced and interconnected. But in
a sonnet like “And Bill and I imagined lives in Related questions start up when one reads the
France,” the details contained within the form can following:
seem like strangers who happen to be ascending or
descending in the same elevator, each one more However well I speak, I have an accent
closely related to things outside the elevator (to tagging my origins: that Teflon fist,
analogous objects or moments in the book as a that hog wallow of investment
whole) than to the other passengers. But that is, we that hegemonic televangelist’s
see, the form of contemporary life. Finally the work zeal to dumb the world down to its virulent
cartoon contours, with the world’s consent:
your heads of state, in cowboy suits,
will lick our leader’s lizard boots.
My link to that imperial vulgarity
is a diasporic accident[.]

Suddenly, amid this scanning of a memory in-
flected by history, comes a statement that engages
with the world polemically. In the Miltonic salvo
of the fifth and sixth lines (one could imagine them

24 Poetry for Students

The Boy

as the closing couplet in a traditional sonnet), we it deemphasizes obsession and becomes a graceful,
are reminded that there is presently more at work almost Shakespearean delineation of the aspects of
than time and chance happening to all things: there love, which always springs up lively and ubiqui-
is something actively at work against the nuanced tous despite the poet’s difficulties. But love arouses
world Hacker so lovingly invokes. The traditional thoughts of death, as in the opening poem of Pre-
poem, by coming to a sharp point, can supply the sentation Piece (1974), in which she speaks to “the
reader with ammunition (such as that couplet); its skull of the beloved” as a brooding nobleman in a
formal consistency has at certain times even helped Jacobean play addresses the skull of his dead mis-
readers to acquire consistency, to get their backs tress. “The Navigators” foreshadows the heartbro-
up and come together and offer a real resistance. ken elegy “Geographer” in Separations (1976), a
(Example: Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the poem that unites in formal, sestina-like word rep-
Children,” which may have been of some use to etition her continuing themes of death, cities, gems,
the cause of labor reform.) Is then the decentered language, and painful but persisting love.
poetics of this book a poetics of resistance, or is it
more a way of tentative survival while “waiting for As a descriptive phrase, “persisting love”
the axe to fall,” as “A Colleague” briefly suggests? grossly understates the obsession with a young
Is an active resistance, over and above the acts of lover that besieges Hacker for a year in Love,
charity and generosity and loyalty which this book Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986).
celebrates, still conceivable? Could the poet’s wit This “verse novel,” as she calls it, is a book-length
and mythmaking skills be pitted more directly sonnet sequence that emphasizes physical love al-
against the Dark Tower? But such questions indi- most exclusively as the poet waits in various situ-
cate that the book’s circle is not a closed one. Read- ations to be united with Rachel, called Ray. The
ing Squares and Courtyards, one has a sense of poems perform in explicit, masculinized language
sharing in a struggle of life with death; and one a Kama-Sutra of fantasized ways of making love.
puts it down fervently hoping that Hacker may live When Ray breaks off the affair, the poet plunges
to one hundred and twenty. into the utter bleakness, without perspective, of the
coda’s final poems. But the poems clarify an un-
Source: Esther Cameron, Review of Squares and Court- derlying motif: her lust arose from the foredoomed
yards, in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 75, No. 3, Fall 2001, p. 186. but irresistible wish to be young again. By 1990,
in Going Back to the River, Hacker is on a more
Jane Augustine even keel, enjoying good food, drink, and the land-
scapes of two continents and appreciating quotid-
In the following essay, Augustine examines the ian objects. All is not pleasure, however, and the
themes running through the body of Hacker’s work. unassimilable horrors of wartime experience and
the persecution of the Jews in France are evoked
From the beginning of Marilyn Hacker’s ca- in “Days of 1944: Three Friends.” Thus reminded
reer her poems have established a unique counter- of her Jewishness, Hacker meditates further on her
point between classical rhyming forms—sestina, ethnic background and her parents’ lives in the ti-
sonnet, villanelle—and blunt declarative sentences tle poem of the volume, as the rivers she goes back
to display the deranged obsessiveness of contem- to—Thames, Hudson, Seine—are seen not as des-
porary minds. Her hard-edged language in the tinations but as reminders of the flux and uncer-
1970s is darkly jewel-encrusted, redolent of a dev- tainties of experience.
astated inner world of difficult loving, tangled sex-
uality, and convoluted relationships. Semiprecious In a sense, however, by the time Hacker wrote
gems—onyx, amethyst, alexandrite—express the Winter Numbers (1994) flux had become a way of
hardness, mystery, and richness of experience. life. (She has homes in both New York and Paris.)
Lured by the foreign and strange, Hacker invents Here the incorporation of French words renders her
“imaginary translations,” playing with exotic lo- forms more supple and varied while also enriching
cales and overblown emotions. Tours de force, the poems’ sense of place. Her internationalism
these poems lead into her central concern, the elu- lessens the pain of change, making it a modus
cidation of her own intense passions, whether sex- vivendi, a respite from narrow American preju-
ual, moral, or political. dices. But her consciousness of painful change es-
calates as personal losses through AIDS and cancer
Love is the premier passion that runs as a con- assail her. Death is the ultimate change that every-
tinuing strand from the earlier to the later work. one fears. The word “numbers” in the book’s title
Because the poem sequence “Separations,” from has multiple associations: with the metrics of
the volume of this title, is written in sonnet form,

Volume 19 25

The Boy

Tours de force, these candid observation, the ability to register ephemeral
poems lead into her central beauty, the strength to face loss and death for her-
concern, the elucidation of self, for everyone—those powers infuse Hacker’s
poems and serve as markers of their profundity and
her own intense passions, accomplishment. Her long career continues to en-
whether sexual, moral, or rich the high tradition of English lyric.

political.” Source: Jane Augustine, “Hacker, Marilyn,” in Contempo-
rary Poets, 7th ed., edited by Thomas Riggs, St. James Press,
poetry, with mileage, with dates and time periods, 2001, pp. 465–66.
the length of time, for instance, between the diag-
nosis of an illness and surgery or death. In the Sources
book’s last section, “Cancer Winter,” meditation on
her own uncertain fate after breast cancer is en- “Anti-Semitism in America 2002: Highlights from a May
larged to include history and the fates of those dead 2002 Survey Conducted by the Marttila Communications
in the Holocaust. Group and SWR Worldwide for the Anti-Defamation
League, Including Poll Results from 1992 and 1998,”
Hacker’s delight in French culture and lan- http://www.adl.org/anti_semitism/2002/as_survey.pdf (last
guage led to her 1996 volume, Edge, translations accessed July 7, 2003).
of the poems of Claire Malroux, who is herself a
translator of H. D., Derek Walcott, and other mod- Cameron, Esther, Review of Squares and Courtyards, in
ern writers into French. The French poet’s themes Prairie Schooner, Vol. 75, Issue 3, Fall 2001, p. 186.
align with the American’s: a consciousness of ag-
ing, “prescience of death,” and effort to connect Campo, Rafael, “About Marilyn Hacker, A Profile,” in
this tangible world in its quirky sounds and flavors Ploughshares, Spring 1996.
with the eternal world. These preoccupations—par-
ticularly a sharp and tender sense of mortality— Grosz, Elizabeth, “Sexual Difference and the Problem of
also pervade Hacker’s 2000 collection, Squares Essentialism,” in The Essential Difference, edited by Naomi
and Courtyards. Her favored form is the sonnet se- Schor and Elizabeth Weed, Indiana University Press, 1994,
quence, although she also likes the terse, imagistic p. 84.
three-line stanza characteristic of William Carlos
Williams. In one section, “Paragraphs from a Day- Hacker, Marilyn, “The Boy,” in Squares and Courtyards,
book,” she employs an interesting 15–line stanza W. W. Norton, 2000, pp. 13–14.
invented by the poet Hayden Carruth, to whom the
volume is dedicated. Close to a book-length uni- —, “Squares and Courtyards,” in Squares and Court-
fied narrative, it interweaves elegiac recording of yards, W. W. Norton, 2000, p. 44.
deaths—youthful, accidental, elderly, inevitable—
with direct notation of survivors’ lives. The settings Olson, Ray, Review of Squares and Courtyards, in Book-
shuttle between two continents, as Hacker herself list, January 1, 2000, p. 864.
does. Her travels provide a metaphor for the pas-
sage between life and death: Review of “The Boy,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 245, No.
24, June 15, 1998, p. 50.
New passport stamps mark
the week of my, Ellen’s and Zenka’s border Rothschild, Matthew, Review of Squares and Courtyards,
crossings, unplotted flight-paths toward the dark in the Progressive, Vol. 65, Issue 1, January 2001, p. 42.

Haunted by death-consciousness, this work the- Sherry, James, et al., “Poetry Criticism: Poetry and Politics,”
matically builds on her earlier books. She has con- Poetry Society of America: http://www.poetrysociety.org/
tinued her commitment to make poetic intercession journal/offpage/poetry_politics.html (last accessed January
for women, blacks, homosexuals, Jews, whoever is 12, 2003).
ill and suffering. Her skilled use of form to serve
Further Reading

D’Emilio, John, and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters:
A History of Sexuality in America, Harper, 1988.

This study provides a comprehensive account of sex-
ual attitudes, conflicts, practices, and legislation in
American history and also aims to debunk notions
that today’s sexual behavior is more liberated than in
the past.

Frank, Anne, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edi-
tion, edited by Miriam Pressler, Bantam Books, 1997.

26 Poetry for Students

The Boy

Originally published in 1947, this classic book is the men in feminism, feminism and new technologies,
account of a young Jewish girl living in hiding from and feminism and philosophy.
the Nazis in Amsterdam. Frank and her family were
later discovered and sent to concentration camps. Garber, Linda, Identity Poetics, Columbia University Press,
Frank died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945. 2001.

Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Dif- Garber, an associate professor in the department of
ference, Routledge, 1989. English and the Program for the Study of Women
and Gender at Santa Clara University, calls for recog-
Fuss analyzes essentialism in this groundbreaking nition of the role of lesbian poets as theorists of les-
study, taking apart its assumptions one by one. bian identity and activism.

Gamble, Sarah, ed., The Routledge Companion to Femi- Riley, Denise, Am I That Name?: Feminism and the Cate-
nism and Postfeminism, Routledge, 2001. gory of “Women” in History, University of Minnesota Press,
1989.
In this text, Garber offers more than a dozen chap-
ters and more than 400 A-Z dictionary entries on top- Riley explores how the socially constructed category
ics such as the history of feminism, postfeminism, of women has shifted through history.

Volume 19 27

Childhood

Rainer Maria Rilke Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Childhood” is included in
1902 his collection Das Buch der Bilder, first published
in 1902. Various writers have translated the vol-
ume as “The Book of Images” or “The Book of
Pictures.” The poem can also be found in Robert
Bly’s collection of translations, Selected Poems of
Rainer Maria Rilke. The Book of Images was pub-
lished just after The Book of Hours and just before
New Poems and marks a shift in Rilke’s poetic de-
velopment toward more imagistic, slightly less sen-
timental verse. Written in thirty-three lines of
rhymed iambic pentameter verse and fit into four
irregular stanzas, “Childhood” addresses loneliness
and the passage of time, typical subjects for Rilke,
who spent his life attempting to describe the effects
of time’s onslaught. Rilke wrote a number of po-
ems about childhood, including “Duration of Child-
hood” and “The Child.” All of these poems express
feelings of wonder and bafflement and grapple with
the puzzle of human existence. Childhood was a
difficult time for Rilke. He was an effeminate and
fragile child, and not at all cut out for the military
schools to which his father sent him. Many of the
images of childhood in his poems are dramatiza-
tions of his own memories.

Author Biography

Born December 4, 1875, in Prague, Austria, Rene
Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was the

28

Childhood

only child of Josef Rilke, a minor railway official, Rainer Maria Rilke
and Sophie Entz Rilke. In 1897, Rilke changed his
name to Rainer Maria Rilke. By most accounts, he In addition to The Duino Elegies, Rilke’s most
had an unhappy childhood, raised by parents who popular and enduring works include The Book of
were mired in an unhappy marriage. Rilke was ed- Hours (1905), Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), the novel
ucated at military boarding schools and, later, stud- The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1930), and
ied philosophy for a short time at Prague’s Letters to a Young Poet (1929), a collection of ad-
Charles-Ferdinand University. His real education, vice in the form of letters. After a lifetime spent bat-
however, came after he left Prague. In Munich, he tling various ailments, Rilke died of leukemia on
socialized with the city’s literati, published two po- December 29, 1926, in Montreaux, Switzerland.
etry collections, and staged a few of his plays. In
Venice, he met Lou Andreas-Salome, an intellec- Poem Text
tual more than a decade older than Rilke, who had
a strong influence on many of Europe’s writers and
artists, including Freidrich Nietzsche. Andreas-
Salome became Rilke’s lover for a short time, ac-
companied him on his travels throughout Europe
and Russia, and had a lasting influence on his
thinking and work.

Raised Roman Catholic, Rilke was obsessed
with religious questions, though he eschewed con-
ventional religious thinking. He believed the hu-
man condition was essentially that of aloneness and
that human beings could access God the most when
they were alone. Because his early poems at-
tempted to describe the contours of his own con-
sciousness, they were often abstract and largely
unsuccessful. However, once Rilke began studying
the visual arts and learning the ways in which
painters created effects, his poetry changed. The
first book that began showing these changes was
Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) pub-
lished in 1902. In poems such as “Childhood,”
Rilke uses finely honed language and focused sim-
iles to depict universal experiences.

Ril ke’s style changed even more after serving
as secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin in Paris
from 1905–1906. In place of the often abstract and
sentimental verse he had been writing, he began
writing poems that described concrete subjects in
symbolic yet detailed terms, and his poems took on
a more chiseled, tightly structured quality. He
called these compositions “thing poems” and pub-
lished a collection of them titled New Poems
(1907). Following the publication of New Poems,
Rilke began an itinerant existence over the next
seven years, traveling to more than fifty different
places, including North Africa, Paris, Egypt,
Berlin, Spain (Toledo), and Duino (between Venice
and Triest), where, as the guest of Princess Marie
Tour en Taxis, he began writing what became The
Duino Elegies (1923), the best-known and most
celebrated of his works.

Volume 19 29

Childhood

Media ent from others. This difference is illustrated in the
Adaptations image of him walking oddly.

• Rilke: Selected Poems (1998) is an audiocassette Stanza 2
published by Audio Literature. It features
Stephen Mitchell reading Rilke’s poems. In this stanza, the speaker foregrounds his
point of view as someone looking back on child-
• ParaTheatrical ReSearch produced Requiem for hood. He compares the “terror” of childhood with
a Friend (1991), a VideoPoem/Docudrama by the “trust” of adulthood, as evoked in the images
Antero Alli, based on the Stephen Mitchell of men and women, a house and a dog, and both
translation of a Rilke poem. marvels at and grieves the change. Even though the
poem is written from a third-person point of view
Poem Summary and attempts to characterize the child’s changing
view of the world, the narrator is clearly present
Stanza 1 and makes his feelings known.

“Childhood” begins with the speaker address- Stanza 3
ing a child who is in school, describing the child’s
feelings of boredom, loneliness, and alienation The poem returns to images of childhood, this
from other children. Adopting the language of a time to the boy playing at dusk, “as the light fades
typical school boy’s view of the world, the speaker away.” The “green place” is a descriptive metaphor
says, “Time in school drags along with so much for a park or a lawn. As dusk settles, an adult—
worry / and waiting, things so dumb and stupid.” most likely a parent—grabs the hand of the boy and
The speaker contrasts this negative representation leads him away. The “oceanic vision that is fad-
of school with the joy the child feels after school. ing” can refer to both the boy’s disappointment at
When school lets out, the boy is free, the world having to stop playing, and the speaker’s sense of
now expansive and inviting. These feelings are il- loss and pain in remembering his boyhood. The
lustrated in the images of leaping fountains and progression of the events in this stanza are typical
mysterious “woody places.” However, even in his of the events of a child’s day.
newfound freedom, the boy still feels odd, differ-
Stanza 4

In this last stanza, the speaker compares fading
childhood to the sailboat the child is playing with
that sinks. The imagery here is dreamlike, under-
scoring the confusion of a child’s mind and the place
of memory itself. The “sails more beautiful / than
yours” suggests people more beautiful and lives more
beautiful than the child’s and the narrator’s. The
“pale / narrow face” is the face of the child himself,
and his puzzling about the future is also the speaker’s
mourning about the past. The poem ends with the
child wondering where childhood will lead him.

Themes

Art

Rilke studied art history and was a lifelong
lover of the visual arts, writing essays on sculptors
and impressionist painters, living at a colony for
painters, and even marrying a sculptor. In The Book
of Images, he tried to create the verbal equivalent
to a gallery full of paintings. In “Childhood,” he
uses imagery in much the same way as painters do.
For example, he uses successive images of the child

30 Poetry for Students

Childhood

Topics
For Further

Study

• Rilke is a poet of memory and often seems ob- ferences that most surprise you and discuss them
sessed with his personal past, especially his as a class.
childhood. Describe at least two powerfully
emotional incidents from your childhood in • Rilke wrote “Childhood” after spending time at
which one or both of your parents played a part. the artist colony at Worpswede, and some crit-
Use as much detail as possible. Then, ask your ics claim he uses words the way painters use
parents to describe the incidents. How does your paint. In groups, compose a visual representa-
memory of events differ from theirs? Write a tion of Rilke’s poem using paint, crayons, mark-
short essay accounting for the difference. ers, images from magazines, and any other
appropriate materials. Present your composi-
• In groups, brainstorm a list of adjectives and im- tions to the class, explaining the choices you
ages you believe represent your experience as a made. Post the work in the classroom, gallery
child and then compose a poem using as many style.
of these words as possible. Take turns reading
the poem aloud to the class. • Rilke was very self-conscious, both in his
poetry and in his interactions with others. Prac-
• In groups, translate Rilke’s poem literally, word tice seeing as Rilke did by sitting still for a
for word, and then compare your translation half hour and concentrating on one object. In
with Bly’s translation. Discuss the choices Bly writing, describe both that object and the emo-
made and the reasons why he might have made tions you experienced looking at it. Read the
them. What does this exercise tell you about the description to your class and have classmates
practice of translating poetry? ask you questions about your description, with
the goal of helping them to experience it more
• As a class, use a Venn diagram to compare and powerfully.
contrast childhood and adulthood. Note the dif-

being anxious, then happy, and then mournful to il- of mind of the adult speaker as much as they de-
lustrate the rapid emotional changes that occur in scribe the state of mind of the child. The child is a
childhood. In the foreground are the child’s experi- younger version of Rilke himself, and by describ-
ences, and in the background is the speaker’s com- ing the child’s confusion and feelings of alienation
mentary on those experiences. Just as a painter uses Rilke is, in fact, describing his own ongoing expe-
the technique of chiaroscuro to produce the illusion riences of the same. In this way, he presents the re-
of depth, Rilke uses images of light and darkness to lentless demands of memory as an affliction that
evoke emotional volatility and psychological depth. the poet must exorcise and exercise.

Memory Isolation

For Rilke, memory is a tool used to unlock the Although the child dreads the prison-like at-
mystery of human existence. The speaker alternates mosphere of school and celebrates his freedom
between describing the child’s reactions to his sur- when the school days end by playing tag with oth-
roundings with making statements commenting on ers, he feels alone and is aware of how different he
those reactions. At the end of the third stanza, af- is from other children. This condition of otherness
ter describing the child playing and then being led is a theme that runs throughout Rilke’s poem and
home by an adult, the speaker writes, “Such oceanic one he links to loneliness. Rilke evokes the feeling
vision that is fading, / such a constant worry, such of loneliness both in imagery and statement. For
weight.” Statements such as these describe the state example, in the second stanza, the adult speaker

Volume 19 31

Childhood

reflects on the child’s being suddenly thrown into nal life, traveled to Russia for the second time, with
the adult world, lamenting, “What crazy mourning, his friend Lou Andreas-Salome. There, he met
what dream, what heaviness, / what deepness with- writer Leo Tolstoy and attended numerous Russian
out end.” In the last stanza, the boy, playing with religious services that, in their rituals and passion,
a sailboat, worries about other boats that are better instilled in Rilke a sense of the divine in human-
than his and contemplates the meaning of his life ity. Rilke was especially taken by the Russian peas-
while gazing into a pond. ants’ conception of God, whom they saw not only
in one another but also in everyday objects and
Style even animals. Upon returning to Europe, Rilke
joined an artists’ colony in Worpswede, near Bre-
Impressionism men, Germany, where he met his future wife, sculp-
tor Clara Westhoff, and painter Paula Becker, who
Rilke describes emotions in this poem impres- became a very close friend. At Worpswede, Rilke,
sionistically. Impressionism seeks to depict scenes already a student of art history, participated in dis-
or characters by using concrete details to evoke cussions of art and philosophy and solidified his
subjective and sensory impressions, rather than to devotion to writing and his sense of himself as an
accurately depict an objective reality. For example, artist. In his poems during this period, he attempted
Rilke refers to the experience of the child’s un- to use “painterly” techniques.
bearable waiting for the school day to end as
“lumpish time,” and the place where he plays after In 1902, when The Book of Images, which in-
school ends as “some green place.” Writers who cludes “Childhood,” was published, Rilke traveled
helped popularize impressionistic writing include to Paris, commissioned to write a monograph about
Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He was chosen to write
the monograph because of his relationship to West-
Juxtaposition hoff, who was a student of Rodin’s. Rodin had es-
tablished a reputation as one of Europe’s greatest
By using contrasting images and emotions, artists, revolutionizing sculpture and modernizing
Rilke underscores the torment and fear that come it. In 1900, Rodin held a retrospective of his life’s
with childhood. In one stanza, the child is lonely, work at the Universal Exposition in Paris. In addi-
bored, and anxious, but, in the next, he is full of tion to Rodin’s work, the Exposition, which was
light and life. In one stanza, he is terrified by the visited by more than fifty million people, featured
world he sees and then comforted by the sight of the work of many artists associated with Art Nou-
adults, a house, and a dog. Juxtaposing these emo- veau, which was fast becoming the dominant style
tions allows Rilke to get at the heart of his experi- for urban architects and designers. Art Nouveau
ence as a child and to show how the experience championed a return to nature and to the rural tra-
remains fresh in the adult speaker’s mind. ditions of arts and crafts and rejected the academic
and cerebral. Rodin’s work habits and his empha-
Sound sis on the materiality of his art greatly influenced
Rilke, who began to rely more on discipline than
Rilke uses a variety of sonic techniques to cre- inspiration for his writing, and who began crafting
ate his impressionistic effects. He uses alliteration poems as tightly structured linguistic objects that
in phrases such as “Dumpfen dingen” (“things so drew attention to the words themselves as much as
dumb and stupid”) and “Welt so weit” (“world . . . what they signified.
so huge”) to emphasize the imagery, and he uses as-
sonance in phrases such as “kleinen steifen” (“small In European intellectual circles during this time,
/ puppety”) and “O Traum, o Grauen” (“what dream, people increasingly discussed the theories of Sig-
what heaviness”) to focus the reader’s attention on mund Freud, who had published The Interpretation
the emotion packed in the images. of Dreams in 1899 and The Psychopathology of
Everyday Life in 1901. Freud’s explanation of
Historical Context dreams—where they come from, and how they
work—made the concept of the unconscious subject
Early Twentieth Century matter for thinkers and artists throughout the twen-
tieth century and influenced Rilke’s own thinking
In 1900, Rilke, disgusted by the industrializa- about his childhood. In treating his patients, Freud
tion of Europe’s cities and the waning of commu- noted that the topic of childhood seduction came up
regularly. It was the repression of the individual’s

32 Poetry for Students