The City Limits
Compare
&
Contrast
• 1970s: New government laws are being passed most 50 percent between the early sixties and
to restrict water and air pollution and to protect mid seventies, when it reaches its all-time high.
forests and endangered species.
Today: Knowledge about the effects of red meat
Today: Few new environmental laws are on the body have caused a shift in the Ameri-
passed; instead, existing laws are repealed as be- can diet to lighter meats; still, the nation’s re-
ing unfair to local businesses. liance on fast food has caused an increase in
American obesity.
• 1970s: The activities of cells are considered to
be among nature’s greatest mysteries. • 1970s: One aspect of the “hippie” movement of
the 1960s is the call to “return to nature,” indi-
Today: Even with the recent completion of the cating a distrust of political and social values.
Human Genome Project, all questions about cel-
lular activity are not answered; however, scien- Today: The word “natural” retains its positive
tists have a good sense of how information is connotation and is used to sell millions of
transmitted throughout the body. dollars in food and health remedies. Independently-
run health food stores are supplanted by publicly-
• 1970s: Americans are eating more and more traded chains.
beef: per capita consumption of beef rises al-
20 million people across the world participated in energy, wit and an amazing compounding of mind
demonstrations and events to mark the occasion. with nature that cannot be overlooked.” “The City
This event is celebrated every year, keeping envi- Limits” is one of Ammons’s most frequently
ronmental awareness at the forefront of public con- reprinted poems.
sciousness.
One of the poem’s most strident admirers is
Critical Overview the literary critic Harold Bloom. In his introduction
to a book of essays about Ammons, Bloom refers
“The City Limits” is one of A. R. Ammons’s most to the poet as “the central poet of my generation.”
famous poems. It came at the time in Ammons’s Foremost among the works that Bloom admires
life when he was first enjoying wide critical praise. Ammons for is “The City Limits,” which he con-
The book that it first appeared in, Briefings: Po- siders an “extraordinary poem.” For him, this one
ems Small and Easy, is considered one of his best, poem marks a mastery of style, with Ammons
showing off his vast intellectual understanding of showing an ability to disappear as a speaker, to let
the natural world and his sharp poetic sensibilities. the poem’s imagery speak for itself. The poet
It was then included in Collected Poems, 1951– Robert Pinsky, on the other hand, questions the phi-
1971, which reached a wide audience after winning losophy that the poem espouses. His essay on Am-
the National Book Award. Geoffrey Hartman an- mons, from his book The Situation of Poetry, points
nounces at the beginning of his review of the book out that “[i]f fear ever turns ‘calmly’ to anything,
for the New York Times Book Review that “with being ‘of a tune with May bushes’ is a lamely
these Collected Poems a lag in reputation is over- rhetorical motive for such turning. . . . Moreover, it
come. A. R. Ammons’s 400 pages of poetry, writ- is the ‘breadth of the natural world, and its radi-
ten over the space of a generation, manifest an ance, which kindle such fear.” In other words, Pin-
sky finds the poem self-contradictory, calling it
“romantically affirmative” but “less convincing”
than other of Ammons works.
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The City Limits
Criticism light as a unifying force, a constant that runs
throughout the universe, it is difficult to not think
David Kelly that he means it to fill the function of God.
Kelly is a creative writing and literature in- Like many images of God, the radiance is con-
structor at two colleges in Illinois. In this essay, sidered to have benevolent intentions: it brings
Kelly considers whether the “radiance” referred to warmth and light to all things of the Earth, uniting
in the poem is as comforting as Ammons wants it them as soon as they have been touched by it. This
to be. touch is not forced upon them, as “each is accepted
into as much light as it will take.” Still, even with-
A. R. Ammons’s reputation grew over the out working at it, the radiance is, by its very exis-
course of the nearly fifty years that he was pub- tence, able to calm strife. Because they have both
lishing poetry, mostly because of two key elements. been touched by this light, things that may seem
The first was his elasticity and curiosity as an artist: completely unrelated to one another are, as the
he went through phases but never settled on any poem puts it in the last stanza, “of a tune” with each
one style as being the “right” one, choosing instead other. This is, at least, what the poem claims.
to constantly experiment. He was versatile enough
to produce a four-line poem or a poem like Tape Contemporary readers certainly respond better
for the Turn of the Year (written on a roll of adding to a passive, non-judgmental, accepting sort of ra-
machine tape, three inches by one hundred feet), diance than they do to a God who can be pleased
displaying equal craft in each. The second aspect or displeased. God is generally thought to have a
that Ammons is remembered for is his drive to de- will, which the radiance apparently lacks. In this
fine with his poetry that meeting place between hu- respect, “The City Limits” replaces old-fashioned
manity and nature. He is generally considered to moral judgements with amorality. It presents a
be a modern master of the nature poem, although world where all, in the judgement of the radiant
opinions do vary: most critics recognize his work sunshine, is equally good and acceptable. While
as the successor of the Emersonian tradition of God finds certain behaviors displeasing, the radi-
Transcendentalism, the first and possibly strongest ance does not, as the poem puts it, “withhold” it-
strain of philosophy produced in America, but a self. It is active only in the sense that it goes to all
few see in Ammons’s work little more insight into things and offers itself to them, but it does so with
the natural world than one could glean from a sub- no particular agenda to promote, no desire to make
scription to a science magazine. things any different than they are currently. This
radiance goes everywhere and deals with all things
Ammons’s poem “The City Limits” is a show- equally, with no distinction for “good” or “bad.”
case for only the latter of these tendencies. It is
structurally sound but has nothing remarkable Within the poem, opposites are brought to-
about its style that would make a reader aware of gether by being touched by the same radiant light
his skill with different forms. The most interesting from above. That much is easy to understand and
thing about it is the way that it approaches theol- accept. The poem complicates the matter, though,
ogy. It makes suppositions about the natural world with its reference to the “city” in its title, which
and presents an inconsistency in traditional human pointedly raises a distinction between nature and
understanding, which it ends up apparently settling. humanity. There is no further mention of “city” af-
It is only after some examination that it becomes ter the title, leaving readers little to go on when
clear that the poem actually has less to say than one they try to guess what Ammons meant the city to
might first assume. represent, or why he mentioned it in a place of such
significance as the title if it was not his intention
It would be hard to deny that what the poem to focus on that idea.
refers to as “radiance” is something like what peo-
ple in the Judeo-Christian tradition usually mean It is fairly routine in poetry about nature to use
when they talk about God. Like God, this radiance the city to remind readers of nature’s opposite,
is omniscient: it is described in the first stanza as which is the man-made world, built from ideas that
being like sunlight, kept out of areas that are “over- nature apparently never intended. This is the world
hung or hidden,” but by the second and third stan- that humans (including, of course, poets) are fa-
zas it is credited with the ability to reach beyond miliar with, one which some humans consider an
the limits of the physical world, to “look into the accomplishment, to be looked upon with pride.
guiltiest / swervings of the weaving heart and bear Ammons gives the impression here that the city is
itself upon them.” When Ammons presents this simply not a good enough way for people to expe-
84 Poetry for Students
The City Limits
rience the world, which he defines here by its lim- The poem’s position
its. He contrasts the city, with its limitations, to the that all is right just because
limitless reach of radiant light. the positive and negative
coexist, or because they
It would be oversimplifying, almost to an in- both accept the radiance,
sulting degree, to think that Ammons wrote this can be comforting,
poem to show his readers how much smaller the disturbing, or just
creations of humanity are when compared to the ridiculous, depending on
vastness of the universe in general. Clearly, hu- how the pieces of
manity is just one part of the whole of existence. experience relate to each
Ammons may aim to remind his readers to keep other.”
their egos in check, but there is nothing new about
the idea, nothing so complex that it would require people to reject some very real experiences. But
an entire poem about it. When “nature” is taken to taking an accepting attitude toward all things is not
mean all things, seen and unseen, known and un- really the strong philosophical stance that it might
known, then it almost goes without saying that hu- at first seem to be. The poem’s position that all is
mans and their cities are limited. right just because the positive and negative coex-
ist, or because they both accept the radiance, can
In “The City Limits,” there is a reference to be comforting, disturbing, or just ridiculous, de-
the fear that comes to people when they see how pending on how the pieces of experience relate to
wide the natural world is and how limited the pro- each other. This is the one thing that Ammons does
tection they can hope for when they gather in cities not address. Readers are not told about any grand
with others. The poem offers examples of things scheme, such as a religious system might devise.
that humans try to avoid, to block out of their lives, They are only told that they should not fear because
including the aforementioned guilt; the “dumped / the more threatening things are “of a tune” with
guts of a natural slaughter”; the excrement that flies those that they find comforting.
feed on; and, by the slightest hint, the vacuum,
shale, wolf, and lichen that are either considered There is no real answer to the question of what
unpleasant or just overlooked in civilized life. “of a tune” means. If, as the phrase implies, the va-
When these are combined with less threatening el- rieties of experience are all in one large system,
ements, such as “gold-skeined wings” and air, working together like notes in a musical chord, then
snow, squid, roses, and finally May bushes, the nat- there would actually be room in that tune for things,
ural world is recognized to have an honest com- like cancer, that would not lead one to abandon fear
pleteness that people in cities are denied. The poem for admiration. If the phrase means that everything
proposes that humans could, if they accepted all of should be considered harmonious exactly because
this variety with the same impartiality that sunlight it exists, then what does the sun’s radiance do to
has, make fear go away. explain this? “Of a tune” asserts a positive feeling
in order to tell readers to feel positive, but it does
Is this possible, or even desirable? In the less not really give any reason for them to do so.
significant examples, accepting the unpleasant but
necessary aspects of life does indeed make sense: In some ways, it is more disappointing to see
turning away from the fly or the wolf’s natural ten- through the grand statements of an uplifting poem
dencies, or burying guilt deep within one’s heart, and find them hollow than it is to read a poem that
actually does prove to be a senseless denial of re- never tries to give a positive message. The overall
ality. But this poem actually goes so far as to name point of “The City Limits” is that humans should
cancer (“the dark work of the deepest cells”) one
of the things that should be praised, not feared, sim-
ply because it exists under the same sun as May
bushes. Perhaps there are some things in the nat-
ural world that should be rejected. Perhaps human
experience should be limited.
The problem with replacing God with radiance
is that radiance, though it sounds pleasant enough,
explains nothing. This might be one of the poem’s
points: traditional views of what God is always end
up creating systems of values that eventually force
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The City Limits
be open to the natural world, not fear it. That is a That “The City Limits” has religious or spiri-
message that we would all like to believe, but the tual overtones becomes readily evident after a cur-
poem does not really prove its point: it only makes sory reading of the poem. Words like “radiance,”
it with language that makes us want to believe it. “abundance,” “testimony,” and “praise” collec-
We would all like to believe that having the sun tively connote a transcendent tone often found in
shine on us protects us, but the only way to do that religious and spiritual works. That the phrase “fear
is to ignore the natural things that we need protec- . . . calmly turns to praise” closes off the poem only
tion from. enhances this reading. Reading the poem aloud for
its rhythms gives one the feeling of a song of praise
Source: David Kelly, Critical Essay on “The City Limits,” or of a sermon being read from a church or temple
in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003. pulpit.
Mark White The structure of “The City Limits,” with the
rhythm that the poem’s punctuation and line
White is a Seattle-based publisher, editor, and lengths demand, along with its repetition, is based
teacher. In this essay, White examines the Old Tes- on the form of a litany, a liturgical prayer with a
tament influences on Ammons’s poem and argues series of repetitions.
its status as an ars poetica.
One of Ammons’s trademark characteristics
“The City Limits” is one of A. R. Ammons’s was his extensive use of colons and semicolons in
most highly praised and discussed poems. First ap- his work; it is a rare Ammons poem that employs
pearing in his 1971 collection, Briefings, and then more than a few periods. His 200-page Tape for
again two years later in his National Book the Turn of the Year, for instance, does not have a
Award–winning Collected Poems: 1951–1971, the single period, and Sphere: The Form of a Motion,
poem earned the immediate respect and awe of a work of 1,800 lines, concludes with a period but
many, including critic Harold Bloom, who, in the otherwise uses colons and semicolons exclusively.
introduction to his Modern Critical Views of A. R. Whereas a period forces the reader to come to a
Ammons, called it “extraordinary.” Poet Richard full stop in both his or her reading and thought
Howard who, in his review of Ammons entitled process, commas, colons, and semicolons force
“The Spent Seer Consigns Order to the Vehicle of pauses of varying lengths and indicate to the reader
Change,” wrote that it was the “greatest poem” of that what precedes the punctuation mark is directly
Briefings. related to what follows. True to Ammons’s form,
the only period in “The City Limits” is at the end.
While there is general agreement that the poem This use of punctuation both speeds the poem’s
addresses significant religious and spiritual themes, rhythm and ties its various ideas together.
there has been less agreement as to the particulars
of the poem’s meaning. Bloom points to Ralph A poem’s rhythm and speed are not only dic-
Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist (one who be- tated by punctuation. Other elements, such as the
lieves that there is a unified soul in man and nature stanza and line lengths, also come into play. The
and that God is immanent in both) influence in the single sentence that makes up “The City Limits” is
poem, while others interpret it more overtly on the broken into six unrhymed tercets (a three-line
basis of either its Eastern or Christian religious stanza), each made up of lines between thirteen and
overtones. Because of the overlap of transcenden- seventeen syllables. Although the stanza and line
talism with both Eastern and Christian beliefs, none breaks each give the reading a slight pause, the long
of these views are necessarily mutually exclusive. lines, like the punctuation, give the poem a more
However, few critics have commented on the prose-like, less interrupted reading. Much like a
poem’s Biblical Old Testament influence. Addi- preacher whose sermon flows from one thought to
tionally, there has been surprisingly little discus- the next, Ammons wants the reader of this poem
sion as to what extent the poem can be considered to move unabated, from the “radiance” of the first
an ars poetica: in other words, how much of “The line to the “praise” of the last, pausing only slightly
City Limits” is Ammons’s own statement about the in between and never fully stopping.
creation and art of poetry? Although these ideas
may seem at first to be unrelated, they both find a The most telling formal conceit that recalls a
connection in the notion of “creation,” and an ex- litany is the poem’s parallel structure. “The City
ploration of that shared thread may shed some un- Limits” comprises five “when you consider”
expected light on what is one of Ammons’s finest clauses that culminate in a “then” conclusion. This
poems. use of parallelism—in this case, the repetitive use
86 Poetry for Students
The City Limits
of the “when” clause—is a common rhetorical de- The inspiration that
vice in poetry. Walt Whitman used the technique drives Ammons as poet, like
extensively, and it is employed widely by Christ- the Old Testament God,
ian preachers, perhaps most famously by those in- turns its eyes upon the
spired by the southern Baptist tradition. Parallelism natural world
is also a common technique found in traditional He- indiscriminately, upon its
brew poetry and is also found extensively through- creations as well as its
out the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. destructions.”
Ammons was, in fact, raised in the South by a its radiant feel, one cannot ignore the death-evok-
Methodist mother and a Baptist father. The sermons ing “birds’ bones” or “dumped guts of natural
that he recalls attending as a child, which he referred slaughter.” These tones are those of the retributive
to in an interview with Cynthia Haythe as “religious God who turned disbelievers into pillars of salt and
saturation,” profoundly impacted him. Although not beset plagues upon the earth; these are not the New
widely considered a Christian poet, Ammons wrote Testament tones of the all-forgiving father of Jesus.
several poems in his career that are explicit in their
Christian themes, for example, “Hymn” and Just as the God of the Old Testament worked
“Christmas Eve.” The word “radiance,” with its with a forceful hand, so too is there a profound
quality of light and a connotation of having a celes- “weight” to the work that the “radiance” is per-
tial origin, is closely tied both to the Christian tra- forming here. In the first stanza, the light charac-
dition with Jesus (He says, “I am the light of the teristically “pours its abundance” onto the world,
world” in The Gospel of John, 8:12) and with the but, in the second and third stanzas, that same light
process of enlightenment in many Eastern traditions, “look[s] into the guiltiest / swervings of the weav-
such as Buddhism and Hinduism. “The City Lim- ing heart” and “bear[s] itself upon them.” By the
its,” with a “radiance . . . [that] does not withhold / fourth stanza, it is offering up “storms of generos-
itself but pours its abundance without selection,” de- ity.” This is not a “forgiving” light; this is a light
scribes a light that is offered without prejudice and that recognizes how humans contrive to manage
is accepted by all who are willing to receive it— their guilty affairs, and this is a light that “bear[s]”
“into every / nook and cranny not overhung or hid- down and exerts pressure upon them. This is a light
den”—and as such can certainly be thought of in with profound weight and influence, a light that
either a Christian or an Eastern context. “storms” as well as “pours.” With the connotations
of death and violence, the poem is deep in the realm
The poem is also deeply tied to the Old Tes- of the Old Testament. There is no hint of the New
tament tradition, a reading that is closely tied to the Testament themes of resurrection or immortality
interpretation that it can also be read as an ars po- here: the bird has died and turned to bones, and
etica for Ammons. flies feed off the remains of natural violence.
As previously mentioned, the poem’s rhetori- How does this Biblical reading fit into the idea
cal structure can be found extensively throughout that this poem can be read as an ars poetica? To
the Bible’s Old Testament, but the poem is linked begin with, Ammons was well known for address-
to the Old Testament in other ways as well. “The ing the art of poetry in his poems; many of his po-
City Limits” recalls the first book of the Bible, Gen- ems address his poetic theories. So much so, in fact,
esis, in the way that it lists the wide range of ele- that critic Stephen Cushman calls ars poetica Am-
ments and creatures in the process of being created mons’s “characteristic mode.”
to populate the world. Ammons’s list—“air or
vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or Taken on one literal level, “The City Limits”
lichen”—is no less representative of nature’s, or can be read as a “nature poem.” As the title sug-
God’s, elements than the Bible’s waters, earth, veg-
etation, fish, birds, and “living creatures of every
kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals
of the earth.” Like the creations of Genesis, which
exist equally beneath the light God has created,
Ammons’s creations receive “the radiance” uni-
formly.
Another Old Testament element of this poem
is some of its tonal characteristics. Despite much of
Volume 19 87
The City Limits
gests, the setting is at the city limits, among the Bonnie Costello
flora and fauna of the rural world. Ammons is sim-
ply listing what can be discovered in nature and In the following essay excerpt, Costello de-
how such a discovery can change a man, force his scribes “The City Limits” as an “eloquent exam-
heart to move “roomier” and his “fear . . . [to turn] ple” of Ammons’s mastery of poetic technique.
to praise.”
Ammons will return to the stance of the pilgrim
If one reads the “limits” of the title as a verb, throughout his career, but beginning with his second
then the meaning is altered significantly. In this book, Expressions of Sea Level, a different stance
light, the title suggests that the city is “limiting,” begins to emerge, one relatively impersonal, com-
or that it “limits.” What does the city limit? Spiri- prehensive, and didactic. Where the medium of the
tual growth and understanding, perhaps, or perhaps pilgrim poet is ritual gesture, the medium of the sage
the poetic imagination. is abstract proposition and example. The revelation
of pattern dominates here over the articulation of
There is no question that nature, and not civi- self. Problems of identity fall away and the self be-
lization, fueled Ammons’s writing; society as such comes a node of consciousness through which the
seldom entered his poems. When they are not ex- shape of the world reveals itself. Where nature in the
plicitly addressing his own poetic theories, Am- pilgrim phase is variously the ally or antagonist to
mons’s poems are almost exclusively populated by the poet’s will, here it is the embodiment of dynamic
elements of the natural world. In Haythe’s inter- design, often articulated in abstract titles. Critics
view, Ammons was quoted as saying that the city have emphasized Ammons’s interest in “ecological
represented for him “the artificial, the limited, the naturalism,” and certainly the greater particularity,
defined, the stalled.” the assimilation of “facts” from the biological and
earth sciences, and especially the emphasis on cy-
With “limits” interpreted as a verb, it is possi- cles, habitats, and cooperative behaviors in the nat-
ble to read the poem as Ammons’s response as to ural world, resonate with developments in the
where his poetic inspiration comes from, or, rather, environmental movement. Still, the natural environ-
where it does not come from. It does not come from ment is not the subject of these poems so much as
civilization but from nature. Ammons’s poetic in- a resource for exemplifying and troping their sub-
spiration is derived from the natural world and ject, which is “the form of a motion.”
spreads its “radiance” back on the disparate ele-
ments of that world uniformly. The rank stench of Ammons draws on natural imagery to give au-
excrement has as much chance of being woven into thority to his vision of pattern, and to remove it from
a poem as does the perfumed scent of a flower. the social and psychological attachments it in-
Ammons does not rank nature’s creations or its de- evitably has when embodied in human institutions.
structions; they all have equal chance of being re- There remains an experiential element to these med-
alized into poems. itations in which knowledge is a process, incom-
plete and subject to the shifting conditions of
The God of the Old Testament reigned over all observer and observed world. But an expansive, vi-
no matter how great or how small. His was the sionary posture and generalizing impulse prevail.
power to create and destroy, and the natural world The prophet-subject identifies with motion rather
is a testament to that power. The inspiration that than being subject to it. Ammons’s particular chal-
drives Ammons as poet, like the Old Testament lenge is to reconcile this Thoreauvian idea of
God, turns its eyes upon the natural world indis- dwelling with his Emersonian emphasis on motion.
criminately, upon its creations as well as its de- “Can we make a home in motion?” he asks through-
structions. It is not an inspiration that tiptoes out his career, and explicitly and affirmatively in
through rose gardens; rather, like the Old Testa- Sphere: The Form of a Motion (1974). In what I am
ment God, it “pours,” and “bears,” and “storms” calling the sage poems he begins to identify the text
down upon the world relentlessly. and the landscape as parts of a dynamic patterning
where mind and world, thought and its object, be-
Just as the God of Genesis saw everything that come intertwined. Neither is firmly grounded in the
he had made and praised it as being “very good,” other. Thus the power terms that motor the narra-
Ammons has turned the light of his inspiration on tive of subject/object relations in the pilgrim poems
all of that creation and turned it into a song of fall away. While Ammons remains attached to a fig-
praise. ure of “mirroring mind” it is clear that the model of
cognition is not really the mirror but something
Source: Mark White, Critical Essay on “The City Limits,”
in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003.
88 Poetry for Students
The City Limits
more mobile and improvisatory (rather than ritual- What
ized, as before). Mapping may be the operative term Do I Read
for what the mind does, rather than mirroring, if we
accept the map as an instrument of navigation rather Next?
than an objective diagram of reality.
• Garbage (1993), Ammons’s book-length poem
Designed though it is to convey a Whitmanian in eighteen chapters, is considered a modern
plurality, the prophetic stance remains selective in masterpiece. It won the National Book Award
the nature to which it attends. This phase is initi- in 1993.
ated with “expressions of sea level,” not sermons
on mountaintops. Ammons grew up in the moun- • A contemporary poet whose writings have of-
tains of North Carolina, but from early on he es- ten been compared to Ammons’s is Pattiann
chewed the iconology of the mountain, which in Rogers. The best works of her career have been
our culture has signified stability, endurance, re- collected in the Song of the World Becoming:
mote imperial power, sublimity, and transcen- Poems, New and Collected, 1971–2001 (2001).
dence. The early poems of dispersal involve a
repeated dismantling of hierarchical organizations. • Critics considering Ammons’s poetry usually
A poem still in the pilgrim mode, “Mountain Talk,” draw a connection to the work of American poet
makes this preference explicit, glancing at the Walt Whitman. Their styles are seldom similar,
“massive symmetry and rest” of the mountain and but both men share a common sensibility about
its “changeless prospect,” but rejecting its “unal- the natural world. Whitman’s masterpiece, Leaves
terable view,” and he repeats it in “A Little Thing of Grass, was published in 1855 and has been in
Like That” from Brink Road (1996): “I have al- print continuously since then.
ways felt, / as one should, I think, shy / of moun-
tains.” In this middle phase Ammons need not • Diane Ackerman writes long essays that com-
dismantle hierarchical orders because he has set his bine ideas of nature and philosophy in much the
gaze where nothing builds too high. In giving the same way that Ammons’s poetry does. One of
seashore a central role, Ammons follows an Amer- her most widely read and accessible books is A
ican tradition of leveled, horizontal relations, of Natural History of the Senses (1990).
many as one, and of a permeable boundary between
stability and flux. The seashore is precisely not a • Much of Ammons’s best nonfiction writing is
home, though it may be a habitat. It provides a sim- collected in Set in Motion: Essays, Interviews,
ple, generally uniform, horizontal image with a and Dialogs (1997), published by University of
maximum of local change and adjustment. It thus Michigan Press. It includes a lengthy interview
becomes an ideal figure for a decentered world. It from the renowned Paris Review interviews.
is in this gnomic phase that the colon arises as a
major signature of Ammons’s work, a sign with grim figure seeks a home, whether by mastery or
multiple, ambiguous significations, marking per- by submission; he seeks to colonize or become ac-
meable boundaries, tentative sponsorships, as well cepted into the infinite. The prophet figure in the
as analogical possibilities. Similarly, the preposi- walk poems already identifies with the movement
tion “of” emerges in this phase to create metaphors he conveys. Since the one/many is not a problem
yoking concrete and abstract terms and to override to be resolved but a reality to be apprehended and
the subject/object dichotomy. experienced, these poems are less sequential or nar-
rative than they are serial and reiterative. Since the
Ammons’s walk poems, central to this phase, speaker identifies with the movement of reality, he
are in a sense what the pilgrim poems grow into. does not need to discover it in a teleological
The sage’s poems are not emblematic (they do not process, but rather enacts it in an improvisatory
convey idea by reducing and abstracting image), process backed by a confident metonymic system.
but analogical. The sage moves freely in and out The tendency to evoke an infinite unity at the end,
of a representational scene, geography of mind and without claiming a “final vision” for the poet, is
geography of landscape, text and referent, allow-
ing for the play of contingent vision without re-
striction to a narrow perspective. In the pilgrim
poems the one/many relation is experienced as a
crisis or problem, whereas the walk poems present
this relation as a primary dynamic of form. The pil-
Volume 19 89
The City Limits
The heavy Whitman’s poetry, a major formal embodiment of
enjambment works with the the one/many balance, and Ammons’s use of it is
careful. In this poem the list has a centrifugal force
lexical diversity to out from the I, so that the I is released even as it
maximize freedom in form continually penetrates back into the plurality
and to create the sense of through anaphora (“I tried to think. . . .”; “I con-
expansion the poem wishes sidered. . . .”). The list functions oppositely in the
second section, where the I does not provide the
to convey emotionally.” hub from which details spin out, but rather intrudes
with personal commentary upon the manifest plu-
even clearer in “Saliences” than in the more famous rality:
“Corson’s Inlet”:
Art Museum, Prudential Building, Knickerbocker
where not a single thing endures, Hotel
the overall reassures; (where Cummings stayed);
... of North Carolina’s
earth brings to grief Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, outer banks,
much in an hour that sang, leaped, swirled, shoals,
yet keeps a round telephone wire loads of swallows,
quiet turning, of Columbus County
beyond loss or gain, where fresh-dug peanuts
beyond concern for the separate reach. are boiled
in iron pots, salt filtering
One feels that the poem’s own rounding off is con- in through boiled-clean shells (a delicacy
firmed here, despite the clamor against the “sepa- true
rate reach.” as artichokes or Jersey
asparagus): and on and on through the villages.
The precursor to Ammons’s prophetic voice is
clearly Whitman, and, like Whitman, Ammons The parenthesis, like the colon, becomes a device
tends to identify the one/many paradigm with for interpenetration of the one and the many.
America. This is particularly true in “One: Many”
which, like most of the prophetic poems, announces Because Ammons is constantly announcing his
its procedure: own practices, criticism has seemed very redun-
dant. But in the behavior of the poem, rather than
To maintain balance in its subject matter or discursive content, we find
between one and many by aesthetic and emotional satisfaction. “Poetry is ac-
keeping in operation both one and many. tion,” and “poetry recommends,” by its behavior,
“certain kinds of behavior.” Ammons’s reflexivity
The poem again locates vision initially in the ex- is itself a particular kind of poetic behavior. “Ter-
periential, and in a descriptive, narrative form. “I rain,” for instance, after launching a description by
tried to summarize a moment’s events,” he tells us, way of metaphor (“the soul is a region without def-
and goes on to instantiate the one/many in terms of inite boundaries”), enters into the second term, for-
a description of natural objects and events at “creek getting its sponsorship. But, within that second
shore.” This section of the poem then embodies the term, the one/many dynamic, which is the real sub-
one/many balance even as it stands, in terms of the ject of the poem, is reiterated in landscape terms.
poem as a whole, for the one, yielding in the next The soul/body or self/landscape dichotomy is trans-
section to the transpersonal many of the American posed into a network of landscape relations, and
continent and its e pluribus unum. Careful not to duality vanishes. The gnomic proposition that
make his path across the continent a “straight line,” opens the poem yields to a perceptual/experiential
the prophetic mind zigzags from California to model as the poet uses present tense to bring for-
Maine and from Michigan to Kansas, integrating ward the landscape, reversing tenor and vehicle.
cultural and natural images and overriding all du- The “like” in the line “It floats (self-adjusting)
alities. The device of the list becomes, again as in like a continental mass” recalls us to the initial
metaphor, but the sponsorship of simile is weak and
yields altogether to description, which enfolds sim-
ile rather than extending it: “river systems thrown
like winter tree-shadows.” Nature’s internal re-
semblances displace a Cartesian model of mirror-
90 Poetry for Students
The City Limits
ing mind. The correspondences of soul/region con- “whirls and stands still” cues the poem to rest in
vert to correspondences within the geography it- the interpenetration of imagination and earth: “the
self—“where it towers most / extending its deepest moon comes: terrain.” This gesture marks the
mantling base.” The second stanza of this poem ad- poem’s unity, providing a double refrain—one in-
justs the intersections that have become too sym- ternal to the poem, one echoing the title to com-
metrical, so that “floods unbalancing / gut it, silt plete a cycle.
altering the / distribution of weight.” “Weight”
brings us back from illusion to the presence of the As “Terrain” indicates, particularity in the
poem; we feel the weight not in the referential silt prophetic phase derives from enumerative rather
but in the “nature of content”—the weight of the than descriptive rhetoric. The most eloquent ex-
“soul,” which is the subject of the poem. This ex- ample is “City Limits,” which realizes vision in
traordinary interpenetration of consciousness and form. The relation of one and many inheres in the
its object returns us, cyclically, to the poem’s open- play of the unifying syntax and pluralizing diction:
ing, but only momentarily. “when you // consider that air or vacuum, snow or
shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen, / each is ac-
The poem seeks other means of mapping the cepted into as much light as it will take.” The heavy
one/many/one paradigm. The images of imbalance enjambment works with the lexical diversity to
are followed by images of dissolution: maximize freedom in form and to create the sense
of expansion the poem wishes to convey emotion-
a growth into ally. What Randall Jarrell said of Whitman applies
destruction of growth, here: Ammons’s lists are “little systems as beauti-
change of character, fully and astonishingly organized as the rings and
invasion of peat by poplar and oak: semi-precious satellites of Saturn.” Here the polarities indicate not
stones and precious metals drop from muddy water only range, but also tension resolved, dualities
into mud. overcome—good and evil, life and death, nature
and culture, high and low. Collisions in the diction
The region is coming apart into multiplicity and (“natural slaughter,” “storms of generosity,” “gold-
separateness (after the earlier symmetry and corre- skeined wings of flies”) have a liberating effect
spondence). The landscape endures a kind of cri- within the constancy of “the radiance.” Collisions
sis of multiplicity and separateness—“whirlwinds become chords in the one / many harmony. The co-
move through it / or stand spinning like separate ordinating conjunction “or” creates an array of op-
orders: the moon / comes: / there are barren spots: positions held in tension: “snow or shale” in
bogs, rising / by self-accretion from themselves.” textural or “rose or lichen” in visual parallel. Not
But if the orders that initiate the poem are entropic, too much is made of these arrangements. They re-
the stanza recuperates with a structure of collision main local and metamorphic, yielding to other
moving toward the “poise” of “countercurrents.” terms of connection. Similarly the anaphora that
The stanza divisions mark an overall pattern pre- binds the list shifts its position in the line so that
siding in the shifts in focus and organization. The litany does not become harangue.
stanza I have quoted moves away from the large
geographic model of continental plates and river The pleasures of the prophetic phase are many
systems to a more local model of “habitat.” The and it is still the phase readers most associate with
“region” is now far more liquid—it does not just Ammons. It delights in the revival of form in inex-
contain lakes and rivers and marshes but is itself haustible substance, the rediscovery of pattern in
“a crust afloat.” In this model the sponsoring unity particulars. “Scope is beyond me” not because the
(“the soul” or “continental mass”) gives way to “a beholder’s vision fails but because motion is the es-
precise ecology of forms / mutually to some extent sential nature of this pattern. What this mode gives
/ tolerable”—a strange phrase in which precision up, largely, is the self’s direct, experiential engage-
and approximation must somehow become com- ment with the life it beholds. Motion remains the-
patible. But at the same time this “precision” moves oretical, a matter of spectacle rather than impact.
to an increasingly imprecise language, a mysticism For all their apparent spontaneity and contingency,
of “the soul” quite different from earlier geologi- these are poems of thoughts more than thinking, life
cal references. Description turns back into height- viewed more than felt. By making a home in mo-
ened metaphor and visionary stance: “foam to the tion, in its form, the sage evades its force. . . .
deep and other-natured: / but deeper than depth,
too: a vacancy and swirl: // it may be spherical, Source: Bonnie Costello, “Ammons: Pilgrim, Sage, Ordi-
light and knowledge merely / the iris and opening nary Man,” in Raritan, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter 2002, pp.
/ to the dark methods of its sight.” The phrase 130–58.
Volume 19 91
The City Limits
Aesthetic and I chose
involvement in our physical the wind
world and the processes of to be delivered to.
The wind was glad
assembly and disassembly and said it needed all
are Ammons’s perennial the body
concerns.” it could get
to show its motions with . . .
Daniel Hoffmann
Martha Sutro The philosophical implications in these poems
are explicit in “What This Mode of Motion Said,”
In the following essay, Hoffman and Sutro ex- a meditation upon permanence and change phrased
amine the canon of Ammons’s work in the tradi- as a cadenza on Emerson’s poem “Brahma.”
tion of American Romantic poetry.
Ammons’s Collected Poems 1951–1971 was
A. R. Ammons is an American Romantic in chosen for the National Book award in 1973. Not
the tradition of Emerson and Whitman. He is com- included in this compendious volume is his book-
mitted to free and open forms and to the amassing length Tape for the Turn of the Year, a free-flow-
of the exact details experience provides rather than ing imaginative journal composed in very short
to the extrusion from it of any a priori order. His lines and written on a roll of adding machine tape.
favorite subject is the relation of a man to nature The combination here of memory, introspection,
as perceived by a solitary wanderer along the and observation rendered in ever changing musical
beaches and rural fields of New Jersey, where Am- phrasing is impressive. Such expansiveness is Am-
mons grew up. Because of the cumulative nature mons’s métier. Sphere: The Form of a Motion is a
of his technique, Ammons’s work shows to best ad- long poem in 155 twelve-line stanzas that comprise
vantage in poems of some magnitude. Perhaps the one unbroken sentence. Taking Whitman and
best, and best known, of these is the title poem from Stevens as his models, Ammons combines the all-
Corsons Inlet, in which, describing a walk along a inclusive sensibility of the one with the meditative
tidal stream, the speaker says, philosophical discourse of the other, as these ex-
cerpts may suggest:
I was released from forms,
from the perpendiculars, . . . the identifying oneness of populations, peo-
straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds ples: I
of thought know my own—the thrown peripheries, the strag-
into the hues, shading, rises, flowing bends and glers, the cheated,
blends of maimed, afflicted (I know their eyes, pain’s melt-
sight . . . ing amazement)
Here as elsewhere Ammons accepts only what the weak, disoriented, the sick, hurt, the castaways,
is possible to a sensibility attuned to the immedi- the
acy of experience, for he admits that “scope eludes needful needless: I know them: I love them, I am
my grasp, that there is no finality of vision, / that theirs . . .
I have perceived nothing completely, / that tomor-
row a new walk is a new walk.” the purpose of the motion of a poem is to bring the
focused,
Another kind of poem characteristic of Am- awakened mind to no-motion, to a still contempla-
mons is the brief metaphysical fable, in which there tion of the
are surprising colloquies between an interlocutor whole motion, all the motions, of the poem . . .
and mountains, winds, or trees, as in “Mansion”:
. . . by intensifying the alertness
So it came time
for me to cede myself of the conscious mind even while it permits itself
to sink,
to be lowered down the ladder of structured mo-
tions to the
refreshing energies of the deeper self . . .
the non-verbal
energy at that moment released, transformed back
through the
verbal, the sayable poem . . .
Ammons continued to revel in both long wan-
dering poems and shorter lyrics in his volume
Sumerian Vistas. As he points out in “The Ridge
92 Poetry for Students
The City Limits
Farm,” a meditative poem of fifty-one stanzas, “I mean if it is not proper or realistic
like nature poetry / where the brooks are never to send word, actual lips saying
damned up . . . ” His work is consistent in its ex- these broken sounds, why, may we be
perimentation with open forms and in its celebra- allowed to suppose that we can work
tion of living processes and of the identity of man this stuff out the best we can and
with nature. having felt out our sins to their
deepest definitations, may we walk with
Perhaps Ammons’s most profound study of you as along a line of trees, every
culture, human behavior, and the physical world is now and then your clarity and warmth
his 1993 fin de siècle long poem titled Garbage, in shattering across our shadowed way.
which he attempts to link science, spirituality, and
philosophy as modes through which to evaluate Source: Daniel Hoffmann and Martha Sutro, “Ammons, A.
garbage. Ammons garbage has a force that brings R.,” in Contemporary Poets, 7th ed., edited by Thomas
communities together. Refuse expresses something Riggs, St. James Press, 2001, pp. 24–25.
essential about us; it is the originating point of com-
munal consciousness and survival. His desire to Sources
know “simple people doing simple things, the nor-
mal, everyday routine of life and how these people Bloom, Harold, “Introduction,” in A. R. Ammons, Modern
thought about it” finds him recognizing “a mon- Critical Views series, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986, pp.
strous surrounding of / gathering—the putrid, the 1–31.
castoff, the used, / / the mucked up—all arriving
for final assessment.” Historian, archeologist, cul- Cushman, Stephen, “A. R. Ammons, or the Rigid Lines of
turalist, environmentalist, and—for this book’s pro- the Free and Easy,” in Critical Essays on A. R. Ammons,
ject—garbologist, Ammons uses the figure of edited by Robert Kirschten, G. K. Hall, 1997, pp. 271–308.
“curvature,” which shows that “it all wraps back
around,” to cast the net wide enough to consider Hartman, Geoffrey, Review of Collected Poems: 1951–
the various angles of garbage, even though the cen- 1971, in the New York Times Book Review, November 19,
tral figure of the book is the garbage dump itself. 1972, pp. 39–40.
Aesthetic involvement in our physical world Haythe, Cynthia, “An Interview with A. R. Ammons,” in
and the processes of assembly and disassembly are Critical Essays on A. R. Ammons, edited by Robert
Ammons’s perennial concerns. In Brink Road he Kirschten, G. K. Hall, 1997, pp. 83–96.
approaches a world largely unpeopled but still in
motion and perpetuity: “ . . . a snowflake / streaks Howard, Richard, “The Spent Seer Consigns Order to the
/ out of the hanging gray, / winter’s first whiten- Vehicle of Change,” in A. R. Ammons, edited by Harold
ing: white on white let it be, / then, flake / to petal— Bloom, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House Pub-
to hold for a / minute or so.” Often compared with lishers, 1986, pp. 33–56.
Robert Frost and e. e. cummings, Ammons has a
voice that sometimes hits a note with a Zen ring to Pinsky, Robert, “Ammons,” in The Situation of Poetry,
it. In “Saying Saying Away” he revealingly con- Princeton University Press, 1976.
tends that poems “flow into a place where the dis-
tinction between meaning and being is erased into Further Reading
the meaning of / being.”
Cushman, Stephen, “A. R. Ammons, or the Rigid Lines of
Winner of the National Book award in both the Free and Easy,” in Critical Essays on A. R. Ammons,
1973 and 1993 and recipient of the Robert Frost edited by Robert Kirschten, G. K. Hall, 1997, pp. 271–308,
medal for the Poetry Society of America for his originally published in Fictions of Form in American Po-
life’s work, Ammons has had a prolific career that etry, Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 149–86.
has carried him to his long volume Glare, which
has the tone of a kind of diary looping evenly, Cushman examines one section of one of Ammons’s
meditatively, seemingly inconsequentially back longer works, showing the interplay between free
to itself. At its best moments it moves with a verse and the poet’s sense of structure, which sneaks
Wordsworthian grace typical of Ammons’s early into his work at discreet moments.
work:
Holder, Alan, “Plundering Stranger,” in A. R. Ammons,
if you can Twayne’s United States Authors Series, No. 303, Twayne
send no word silently healing, I Publishers, 1978, pp. 74–89.
In this relatively early survey of Ammons’s works,
Holder focuses on the various ways in which nature
is used in the poet’s works.
Kirschten, Robert, “Ammons’s Sumerian Songs: Desert
Laments and Eastern Quests,” in his Approaching Prayer:
Volume 19 93
The City Limits
Ritual and the Shape of Myth in A. R. Ammons and James
Dickey, Louisiana State University Press, 1998.
In this article, Kirschten, who has written much about
Ammons, writes about Ammons in terms of the sim-
ilarities between his ideas and Eastern philosophy.
Schneider, Steven P., A. R. Ammons and the Poetics of
Widening Scope, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1994.
Schneider examines the ways in which Ammons’s
overall poetic vision can be seen in the imagery,
form, and subject matter of his poems.
94 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
“His Speed and Strength,” published in Alicia Os- Alicia Ostriker
triker’s 1980 collection The Mother/Child Papers, 1980
is a mother’s meditation on both her son’s matura-
tion and the human race’s survival. The poem’s set-
ting, its references to popular culture, and its
conversational diction all belong to contemporary
America. The speaker’s allusions to mythical god-
desses and poet Walt Whitman, however, signal the
timeless relevance of the mother’s thoughts. In her
book of essays, Writing Like a Woman, Ostriker
says of the period in which she wrote this poem:
“It was impossible [in the 1970s] to avoid medi-
tating on the meaning of having a boy child in time
of war, or to avoid knowing that ‘time of war’
means all of human history.” In the poem, the
mother watches her son display “speed and
strength” on his bicycle and at the town pool. She
fancies herself a modern version of the ancient god-
desses Niké and Juno as she competes with and
protects her son. Through a series of ordinary im-
ages, the mother observes the masculine and fem-
inine traits that compose her son’s emerging adult
identity. The poem implies that our culture opposes
these traits at its own peril. On the one hand, the
mother is proud of her son’s developing speed,
strength, and competitiveness—all traditionally
masculine traits. But, since these traits also suit
boys to become war fodder, the mother hopes to
nurture in her son a (traditionally feminine) sense
of connection to other people and things. If he
maintains this connection, his strength may serve
constructive, not destructive, ends. The son shows
95
His Speed and Strength
consin. Her dissertation became her first critical
book, Vision and Verse in William Blake (1965);
later, she edited and annotated Blake’s complete
poems for Penguin Press. In 1965, Ostriker began
teaching at Rutgers University.
Poem Text
His speed and strength, which is the strength of ten 5
years, races me home from the pool.
First I am ahead, Niké, on my bicycle,
no hands, and the Times crossword tucked in my
rack,
then he is ahead, the Green Hornet,
buzzing up Witherspoon,
flashing around the corner to Nassau Street.
Alicia Ostriker At noon sharp he demonstrated his neat 10
one-and-a-half flips off the board: 15
concern for his mother and a sense of connection Oh, brave. Did you see me, he wanted to know. 20
to other boys as he goes off to play. Seeing both And I doing my backstroke laps was Juno
masculine and feminine traits in her son and imag- Oceanus, then for a while I watched some black
ining herself as both a goddess of military victory and white boys wrestling and joking, teammates,
and a goddess of motherhood, the speaker implies
that her son will also successfully connect and in- wet
tegrate diverse traits. plums and peaches touching each other as if
Author Biography it is not necessary to make hate,
as if Whitman was right and there is no death.
Ostriker was born in Brooklyn, New York, on No- A big wind at our backs, it is lovely, the maple
vember 11, 1937, to David Suskin and Beatrice
Linnick Suskin. Her father was employed by the boughs
New York City Department of Parks. Ostriker’s ride up and down like ships. Do you mind
mother wrote poetry and read Shakespeare and if I take off, he says. I’ll catch you later,
Browning to her daughter, who soon began writ- see you, I shout and wave, as he peels
ing her own poetry as well as showing an interest away, pedaling hard, rocket and pilot.
in drawing. Initially, Ostriker had hoped to be an
artist, and she studied art as a teenager and young Poem Summary
adult. Two of her books, Songs (1969) and A
Dream of Springtime (1979), feature her own Lines 1–2
graphics on the covers.
In these lines, the speaker introduces a boy’s
Ostriker received her bachelor’s degree in physical speed and strength, repeating the word
English from Brandeis University in 1959 and her “strength” twice for emphasis. The poet reinforces
master’s and doctorate from the University of Wis- the sense of speed by using alliteration, beginning
nearby words with the same “s” sound. The traits
of speed and strength signal other masculine traits
about which the speaker is both proud and con-
cerned. With the first line, Ostriker invokes the ex-
pression “the strength of ten men,” but she uses
enjambment, wrapping the sentence onto the next
line, to create two meanings at once. First, the poet
causes readers to complete the phrase “the strength
of ten” in their heads with “men.” She thereby in-
troduces themes of manhood and great strength
without stating them directly. Next, by beginning
the second line with “years,” the poet deflates the
heroic phrase and reveals that “he” is only a boy
96 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
of ten. Though the word “years” holds comic sur- Line 10
prise here, the poet causes readers to keep both
ideas in their heads: the boy is only ten, but he will This line identifies the speaker as a mother and
grow into a strong man one day just around the cor- the boy as her son. The slightly sarcastic cheer,
ner. Poets often use enjambment to create two “Oh, brave,” indicates a mother’s blend of pride
meanings from one sentence or phrase. and teasing toward her children. The boy’s need for
his mother to see, approve, and acclaim his feat is
Lines 3–4 characteristic of child. Note that his “demand,”
“Did you see me,” has no question mark, though,
These lines set a tone of playfulness and com- because it is not really a question. This mother does
panionship between the speaker and the boy. That not seem to respond, and the boy does not seem to
the mother is first ahead of and then outdistanced need her to. The words and punctuation in line 10,
by the boy shows that she fosters his sense of com- then, reinforce the theme of a boy poised on the
petition and that he will soon grow faster and verge of manhood: the boy is still a child who needs
stronger than she. For the moment, however, they and wants his mother’s approval, but he is almost
are equal. In line 3, the speaker characterizes her- beyond this stage.
self as the Greek goddess Niké, who represented
winged victory, or speed, and whose image com- Line 11
memorated military victories in particular. This al-
lusion, together with the themes of manhood, Here, the speaker imagines herself as the Ro-
begins the poem’s subtle meditation on masculin- man goddess Juno. Juno was the wife of Jupiter,
ity and war. The speaker’s mention of the “Times queen of the gods, and the goddess of married
crossword” suggests both that this is a leisurely day women and childbirth. (In Greek legend, Juno is
and that the mother enjoys intellectual as well as named Hera and her husband is known as Zeus.)
physical challenges. In myth, Juno is fiercely jealous of her unfaithful
husband Jupiter and uses her powers primarily to
Lines 5–7 punish the women with whom he cavorts. Thus,
most references to Juno imply a jealous, wrathful,
The rest of the first stanza shows the boy’s implacable woman. By referring to Juno luxuri-
competitive energy as he races out of sight. Com- ously doing the backstroke, the speaker reinterprets
paring the boy to “the Green Hornet,” a popular ra- and revises the traditional myth of this goddess.
dio adventure series of the 1930s and 1940s, the The mother in this poem shows none of those neg-
speaker again highlights and gently deflates the ative traits, so a relaxed, accepting, loving Juno
boy’s super-manly aspirations. Like Superman, the emerges in these lines.
Green Hornet was a newspaperman by day and a
masked crime-fighter by night. Playing on the name Line 12
“Hornet,” the speaker watches the boy “buzz” and
“flash” away like an insect. This also identifies the The poet may separate the name “Juno Oceanus”
speaker as a member of an earlier generation who on two lines because of rhythm and/or meaning.
heard, or has heard of, that radio show. The names Line 11 has eleven syllables already; adding the
“Witherspoon” and “Nassau Street” locate the four syllables of “Oceanus” would disturb this
poem in Princeton, New Jersey, where those main stanza’s rhythm of mostly ten and eleven syllable
streets meet. lines. The poet also may have enjambed “Oceanus,”
writing the name on the next line, to create a dual
Lines 8–9 meaning. Oceanus was a mythical male figure who
fathered thousands of sea nymphs and river gods.
In stanza 2, the setting shifts to the town pool. He was a powerful but kindly old titan who ruled
The speaker’s mention of “noon sharp” may have the oceans before Jupiter and his brothers took over
several implications. Noon is poised between the heavens and earth. By conceiving of “Juno
morning and afternoon, as the boy is poised be- Oceanus,” the speaker envisions a new, dualistic,
tween childhood and adulthood. The sun at that mythic figure who is both female and male, mother
hour approaches its peak strength, as the boy ap- and father, and a ruler of the heavens and the seas.
proaches his. This moment is recorded exactly in By splitting the name over two lines, the poet un-
time with the precision of a mother, recalling events derscores this dual nature. This new mythic figure
in her own and her child’s shared lives. The boy’s who encompasses male and female provides a
precise flip again reminds the reader of his matur- model for the son to emulate as he combines mas-
ing physical agility. culine and feminine qualities in himself.
Volume 19 97
His Speed and Strength
Lines 13–14 back from this line to line 14, the reader can see
that the phrase “touching each other” means more
The rest of line 12 through the end of the stanza than the boys’ literal, physical contact as they wres-
presents images of earthly oppositions synthesized tle. In light of the reference to Whitman, the boys
into a harmonious whole. The speaker watches boys “touch each other” spiritually as well, insofar as
of two races, whom she compares to two types of each life is linked to the universe.
fruit, play roughly and softly. Each difference the
speaker identifies is balanced by similarities: the Lines 17–18
boys are all boys, “teammates,” and all like fruit.
The speaker may compare the boys to “plums and This line creates an expansive feeling. It is the
peaches” in part because these are summer fruits longest line in the poem. Whitman’s poems had
(and it is summer in the poem). Also, fruits are of- enormously long lines that strove to encompass
ten associated with the freshness of youth, feminin- everything, and Ostriker may be echoing his style
ity and sexuality, since the story of Eve eating the here. These lines also provide a breath of fresh air
apple in the Garden of Eden. By describing the boys by simply describing the wind in the trees; all the
this way, the speaker suggests that she sees how their other lines describe the boy or the mother’s
youthful play contains opposite elements—feminin- thoughts. When the speaker uses a simile to com-
ity and sexuality—of which they are not yet aware. pare maple boughs to “ships,” she implies that the
The last words of the second stanza, “as if,” em- wind is like an ocean on which the boughs “ride.”
phasize that the image of the boys as “teammates” Without stating this likeness between the wind and
is more the speaker’s hopeful vision than a reality. the ocean, the speaker shows how different ele-
ments (water and air) are, like people of different
Line 15 races or genders, indivisibly connected. The word
“ships” might invoke associations with the military.
The speaker ends stanza 2 with “as if” also in
order to make the first line of stanza three a bold Line 19
declaration of her vision of human relations. The
third stanza’s assurance balances the second Here, the boy again asks his mother a question
stanza’s tentative ending. Denying the need for without a question mark or quotation marks. The
strife between races of people, the speaker indi- punctuation in these lines reinforces the ideas that
rectly reminds the reader that this mother’s con- the boy is growing up and that he is nevertheless
templations take place during or shortly after the similar and connected to his mother. “He says”
Vietnam War. The words “make hate” echo the rather than “he asks” in line 19 shows the boy again
Vietnam-era slogan: “make love, not war.” asserting his decision rather than asking permis-
sion. The phrase “I’ll catch you later” on the same
Line 16 line at first appears to be spoken by the boy, but
the period after he speaks and the comma after
In this line, the speaker refers to Walt Whit- “later” and “see you” indicate that the mother
man, an American poet who wrote exuberant po- speaks this phrase. By omitting quotation marks,
etry in the 1800s about the connectedness of all life. the poet forces the reader to look closely to distin-
Repeating “as if” to add on to her first wish, the guish who is speaking. The use of slang—“take
speaker links the idea of racial and human harmony off,” “catch you”—by both the son and mother also
to Whitman’s idea that “there is no death.” Whit- makes it hard to tell them apart. The poet writes
man’s poems assert that every individual joins the these lines without quotation marks and in the same
earth in death and lives on in “leaves of grass,” slang diction purposely, to suggest that the son and
trees, and other life forms. Humans also live on, mother are, like many other diverse elements in this
according to Whitman, by nurturing their own chil- poem, intimately connected.
dren and imagining future generations. When writ-
ers allude to previous writers, they often intend to Lines 20–21
invoke that writer’s outlook on life rather than any
specific poem or story. By alluding to a famous, The final two lines connect several of the
visionary poet who believed that all life forms, dif- poem’s metaphors. The expression, he “peels away”
ferences, and contradictions were connected in a reminds the reader of the fruit metaphor from stanza
vibrant whole, Ostriker reminds the reader that two. Because the other boys by the pool are associ-
there is a tradition of thought in this vein. Not only ated with fruit in the mother’s mind, the words “peel
mothers, hoping their sons will not be killed in war, away” suggest that the son goes off to join the other
envision the world as so interconnected. Looking boys in their play. The son’s wish to play with boys
98 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
rather than his mother is a final sign that he is leav- Topics for
ing childhood and growing up. The last words of the Further
poem, “rocket and pilot” again invoke images of Study
war, since rockets were created for war. The men-
tion of a rocket also makes literal the son’s metaphor • Research and discuss the differences between
for leaving: “taking off.” Though the mother waves men and women, in terms of speed and strength.
happily as he speeds away, her vision of him as both Organize your research into a short report, us-
“rocket,” the instrument of war, and “pilot,” an agent ing charts, graphs, and other graphics wherever
of war, is an ominous ending to the poem. possible.
Themes • Research the differences between male and fe-
male styles of communication. Imagine that you
Masculine versus Feminine are a member of the opposite sex. Now, write a
journal entry that describes the difficulties you
As the title implies, this poem is concerned have communicating with someone from the op-
with issues of masculinity, at least in the tradition- posite sex (i.e., your actual sex).
ally accepted sense. In the poem, the narrator de-
scribes a day in which she spent time with her son • Choose one female athlete, from any point in
at the local community swimming pool. In this history, who has competed successfully with
scene, the narrator underscores the “speed and men. Write a short biography about this woman.
strength” of her son in several ways. At the begin-
ning of the poem, the mother remembers how her • Read any of the classic texts from Carl Jung or
son raced her home from the swimming pool. The other modern researchers who were among the
race begins in the mother’s favor: “First I am ahead, first to discuss the psychological differences be-
Niké, on my bicycle.” The reference to Niké, the tween men and women. Compare the ideas in
Greek goddess of victory, indicates that the narra- this text to the latest research concerning the dif-
tor might win this race. Yet, the son soon prevails: ferences between the sexes.
“then he is ahead, the Green Hornet,” a reference
to a popular comic book male superhero. The dif- mother’s reaction when she sees a bunch of “black
ferences between the two styles of competing are / and white boys wrestling and joking, teammates.”
profound. While the mother rides her bicycle with The wrestling is once again an indication of the in-
“no hands, and the Times crossword tucked in my herent aggressive male tendencies that Ostriker is
rack,” indicating a lack of concern for winning, the underscoring. Yet, in the context of the poem, the
boy is described as “buzzing” up a street and “flash- wrestling between African American boys and
ing around the corner.” white boys also serves to highlight the fact that
these two groups, in the adult world at least, are
Traditionally, masculinity is associated with locked in a racial struggle. The poet comments on
strength, competitiveness, and bravery, while fem- this when she notes that the boys are “touching each
ininity is associated with weakness and peace. Al- other as if / it is not necessary to make hate.” The
though the identification of these traits as poet knows that, although these boys are friends
specifically male has been hotly debated and has here in the sheltered environment of the pool, when
been labeled a stereotypical approach by some, Os- they grow up and enter the adult world, they may
triker sticks to the traditional associations in this become enemies, involved in the same racial con-
poem. This continues as Ostriker describes what flict that adults are.
the actual swim at the pool was like. While the
mother is leisurely “doing my backstroke laps,” the Childhood
boy is performing impressive “one-and-a-half flips
off the board.” The boy is concerned with know- It is their childhood that protects the boys from
ing whether or not his mother saw his acrobatics. this adult hate that pervades society. As the poem
Racial Conflict
Ostriker also discusses, at least in a subtle
sense, the fact that mother and son live in a world
filled with racial hatred. Ostriker describes the
Volume 19 99
His Speed and Strength
progresses, one might think that perhaps there is lables. The first line of each stanza has 10 sylla-
hope for this generation of males, that maybe they bles. Since most of the poem’s lines are approxi-
can succeed peacefully where their parents’ gener- mately the same length, the poem has consistency
ation has not. Yet, at the end of the poem, Ostriker despite varying stresses. This structure parallels the
leaves her readers with an image that predicts the poem’s themes of continuity amid variation.
future, war-like tendencies of the boy: “he peels /
away, pedaling hard, rocket and pilot.” The use of Historical Context
these terms underscores the idea of physical war,
which was a global fear when Ostriker wrote this The Cold War
poem, during the ideological conflict known as the
Cold War. While the mother is content to focus on Ostriker wrote “His Speed and Strength” dur-
the “big wind at our backs” as they ride home and ing a time when the world was anything but peace-
is not concerned with riding faster, the boy chooses ful. Following the dropping of atomic bombs on
to go faster, racing out of his childhood and into Japan by the United States at the end of World War
his adult life. One can determine, from the cues that II in 1945, several countries quickly rushed to cre-
Ostriker gives readers in the poem, that this future ate their own atomic and nuclear arsenals. For the
will likely be based on the boy’s desire to achieve next four decades, this struggle polarized itself in
greater feats of speed and strength. an escalating conflict between the communist So-
viet Union and the democratic United States. The
Style resulting tension between these two countries—and
between communism and democracy in general—
“His Speed and Strength” is written from the first was labeled the Cold War, and for good reason. Al-
person point of view, which means that the speaker though much of the period was technically spent in
refers to herself as “I.” The “I” who narrates a poem peacetime, the pervasive feeling of suspicion and
or story is often a fictional persona or character, paranoia that was generated by this clash of super-
rather than the author. In this poem, however, Os- powers made many feel that they were fighting a
triker seems to refer to her own son and their real war. This feeling was still strong in 1980 when Os-
hometown in New Jersey. This poem is written in triker published “His Speed and Strength.”
free verse, which means that it does not have a reg-
ular pattern of rhymes or meter. The poem is di- The 1980 Moscow Olympics
vided into three stanzas that each have seven lines.
The number of syllables and the rhythm in each The Cold War hatred between communist and
line are irregular. democratic societies affected athletes too. When
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979,
To determine whether a poem is written in free United States President Jimmy Carter instituted a
verse or a set form, readers can scan the meter, boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, which were
highlighting the syllables that are emphasized when being held in Moscow that year. The resulting boy-
spoken aloud. The first three lines of “His Speed cott—which ultimately affected 5,000 athletes rep-
and Strength” use four types of stresses: iambs, resenting more than 80 nations—was the biggest
trochees, spondees, and anapests. Olympic boycott in history. As a result of the re-
duced number of athletes, the 1980 Olympics were
The first line can be read as using two iambs, not very impressive. The Soviet Union dominated
one trochee, and two iambs. Or, if one stresses “is” the highly politicized Games, taking home 195 to-
instead of “which,” then there are five iambs in a tal medals, including 80 gold medals, but the per-
row; this is called iambic pentameter. The second formances by many athletes left much to be desired
line has three feet made up of a spondee and two and were often not up to previous Olympic qual-
anapests. ity. This was due in part to the fact that those ath-
letes who did attend the Olympics also faced a
If you cannot find a regular pattern of stresses, rowdy crowd and cheating by the officials.
rhyme, or feet in the first few lines, the poem is
probably written in free verse. Though Ostriker’s Reagan Is Elected
poem does not have a regular meter, many lines
have the same number of syllables. Lines 4, 7, 10, Hostilities between the Soviet Union and the
11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, and 21 all have eleven syl- United States increased after the 1980 election of
United States President Ronald Reagan. Formerly
100 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
Compare
&
Contrast
• Late 1970s/Early 1980s: Following the Civil Today: The current state of the achievements of
Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, feminism is debated. Although women occupy
African Americans and other minorities move many power roles traditionally held by men,
into positions of political and economic power such as CEO positions in major companies, oth-
in America. ers choose to become housewives. New studies
indicate that women may experience infertility
Today: While African Americans and other mi- problems after their late twenties, prompting
norities have made several gains on the path to some people to speculate that women may once
equality, race relations remains a tense issue. again have to choose between career and fam-
Following attacks by Middle Eastern terrorists ily. During the last half of the Clinton presi-
on American soil in 2001, hate crimes against dency, Madeleine Albright, a female politician
Americans of Middle Eastern heritage increase. noted for her aggressive political style, becomes
the first American woman to hold the position
• Late 1970s/Early 1980s: Following the second of secretary of state.
wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s,
women in some parts of the world have more • Late 1970s/Early 1980s: British Prime Minis-
choices on how to live their lives, and many ter Margaret Thatcher and American President
try to balance work and family roles. High- Ronald Reagan join forces in the Cold War
profile women are recognized in both tradition- struggle against communism in general and the
ally feminine and masculine roles. Mother Soviet Union in particular.
Theresa of Calcutta receives the 1979 Nobel
Prize for Peace. The same year, Margaret Today: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
Thatcher becomes Europe’s first woman prime American President George W. Bush join forces
minister. She is noted for her combative politi- in the struggle against terrorism in general and
cal style. Iraq in particular.
a Hollywood actor, Reagan’s charisma and strong viet Union, placing America on what appeared to
will had helped him win the California governor’s be the path to World War III. Besides talking tough,
race twice. Anybody who doubted his ability to Reagan’s image also made him seem to be power-
compete with big-name politicians for the presi- ful when it came to negotiating with hostile terror-
dential bid was soon proved wrong, after a memo- ists. After his inaugural ceremony in 1981, it was
rable debate during the Republican primaries, when announced that Iran had agreed to release its Amer-
the moderator attempted to shut off Reagan’s mi- ican hostages.
crophone. Reagan’s forceful reply and public dis-
play of strength helped him win over the public. Critical Overview
He ultimately won the presidency against Democ-
ratic incumbent Carter, who tried to blast Reagan Although there is little criticism on “His Speed and
during his campaign by depicting Reagan as a war- Strength,” several scholars have outlined charac-
monger. Reagan’s focus on massive amounts of de- teristic themes and issues in Ostriker’s poetry.
fense funding soon proved that he was, in fact, Moreover, Ostriker has written critical books about
interested in arming the United States for potential poetry, which help illuminate her work. Critic Janet
war with the Soviet Union. With the help of tough Ruth Heller in her essay, “Exploring the Depths of
international allies, like British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, Reagan faced off with the So-
Volume 19 101
His Speed and Strength
Relationships in Alicia Ostriker’s Poetry,” analyzes in relation to its historical context and events in the
Ostriker’s treatment of the “ambivalence” and “ten- poet’s own life.
sions in intimate relationships,” such as those be-
tween men and women or between parents and On the surface, it appears that Ostriker’s poem,
children. These tensions and divisions are revealed “His Speed and Strength,” is primarily about the
in poems about miscommunication, ambivalence, differences between men and women. Ostriker
suppressed anger, invisibility, silence, uncertainty, draws on the traditional stereotypes of men and
and duality, particularly within women who are women, emphasizing male aggression and female
both mothers and writers. In her critical book Steal- passivity. There is, however, a darker side to this
ing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Po- poem, which starts with the title itself. Although
etry in America, Ostriker finds these and other the poem does contrast men and women, or rather,
recurring images of division in poetry by women a mother and son, it is really a poem about the cul-
from the 1600s to the present. In “His Speed and tural factors that determine how male “speed and
Strength,” the mother recognizes dualistic traits in strength” are used in American society, namely for
her son, but rather than causing tension within him military purposes. One can understand this better
or between mother and son, his duality gives the by examining the historical and autobiographical
mother hope for his future wholeness. contexts within which Ostriker wrote the poem.
Focusing perhaps on poems such as this, other The poem was first published in 1980 in Os-
reviewers argue that Ostriker’s poems resolve ten- triker’s poetry collection, The Mother/Child Pa-
sions between and within people and between pub- pers. Yet, Ostriker began writing the book much
lic and private life. In “His Speed and Strength,” earlier. As Amy Williams notes in her entry on Os-
motherhood appears to be as, or more, powerful than triker in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the
the forces, such as war, that disturb the eternal book “was a ten-year project” that Ostriker began
process. Ostriker’s poetry frequently focuses on in 1970. That year, the United States was embroiled
women’s lives and aspirations, myths of femininity, in one of its most bitter Cold War conflicts—the
and relationships between men and women. When Vietnam War. Officially, the American participa-
Ostriker began writing poetry in the 1960s, there tion in the war took place from 1968 to 1973. Like
were few poems about female experiences, such as many other Cold War hostilities, however, the
pregnancy, birth, and motherhood, next to all the po- Vietnam War was rooted in events that took place
ems about male experiences of war, heroism, and much earlier. The conflict in Vietnam actually be-
love. The stories of female experiences that Ostriker gan in 1946, shortly after World War II ended.
did find in her years in college and graduate school World War II left many areas in Southeast Asia un-
were often rooted in ancient myths that portrayed stable, and over the next two decades the United
women in negative and stereotypical ways. Like the States unofficially provided military support to
women poets she studies, Ostriker seeks to create South Vietnam and its allies who were fighting
“revisionary myths,” replacing negative myths about Communist forces in North Vietnam. United States
women with new and revised stories of women’s au- policy during this time period emphasized this type
thority and power. When the speaker in Ostriker’s of support, as an attempt to stop the spread of Com-
poem refers to herself as the goddesses Niké and munism in Southeast Asia.
Juno, she attempts to modernize and transform the
negative connotations associated with these mythic Many of the poems in Ostriker’s book under-
female figures. Where Ostriker’s criticism explores score or comment on events that took place during
how female identity and consciousness has been rep- this very unpopular conflict. Indeed, most critics,
resented in literature so far, her poetry envisions and including Williams, highlight the book’s connec-
creates new images of womanhood. tion to the war. Williams says, “she contrasts the
events of her own life with the Vietnam War.” “His
Criticism Speed and Strength” is more subtle in its approach,
and does not link directly to any one event in the
Ryan D. Poquette Vietnam War. Instead, it discusses war in general.
Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English The poem contains many allusions to war or
and specializes in writing about literature. In the aggression, starting with mythological associa-
following essay, Poquette discusses Ostriker’s poem tions. In the first stanza, the poet discusses a
mother’s bike race with her son, saying “First I am
ahead, Niké, on my bicycle.” In Greek mythology,
Niké is the goddess of victory. Although victory
102 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
can apply to many situations, such as winning a By associating the
competition, much of Greek mythology deals with boy in the poem directly
conflict and war, so one can assume that Ostriker’s with military weaponry
use of Niké is meant to be an allusion to war. such as rockets, the poet is
noting that this ten-year-
On a similar note, later in the poem, Ostriker old boy may someday be
alludes to a Roman goddess, when she is describ- groomed for military
ing the mother’s day at the pool: “And I doing my service.”
backstroke laps was Juno.” In Roman mythology,
Juno is the Roman goddess of light, birth, women, of this poem, however, her use of the ships is, once
and marriage. She is also the wife of Jupiter, the again, meant to underscore a darker meaning. Dur-
chief Roman god, who rules over all of the other ing the Vietnam War, the use of naval warships
gods, enforcing his dominance when necessary. By formed a crucial part of the United States attack
referring to herself as Juno, the poet is underscor- strategy. As coastal countries, North and South
ing, albeit in a subtle way, the mother’s connection Vietnam could be accessed by the sea, and the
to her son and his male dominance and power. She American government used this geographic aspect
is demonstrating her femininity by leisurely taking to its advantage, off-loading soldiers and weapons
laps around the pool, while he is demonstrating his to the two countries.
masculinity with his impressive “one-and-a-half
flips off the board,” an ultra-male symbol of com- Ostriker uses a more direct military reference
petition and athletic prowess. in the final part of the poem, when she talks about
the boy taking off during their ride home, “pedal-
Still later in the poem, Ostriker references an- ing hard, rocket and pilot.” By comparing the boy’s
other general war theme—hate. When she is dis- bicycle to a rocket and the boy himself to a pilot
cussing the groups of boys “wrestling,” another who is navigating the rocket, the poet is directly
symbol of male aggression, she notes that they are linking the boy to the war. This is Ostriker’s way
also “joking,” and that they are “touching each other of commenting on the Selective Service system that
as if / it is not necessary to make hate.” On the sur- drafted thousands of young men into military ser-
face, this statement seems to apply only to the racial vice, in an attempt to feed the war machine. Even
conflicts that were evident in the United States at before the Vietnam War began, the United States
this point. It is not uncommon for the white boys sent an increasing number of American soldiers to
and African American boys to be joking around, be- Southeast Asia, posing as nonaggressive military
cause they are, to some extent, less aware of the advisors. By the time that the United States offi-
racial hatred that many adults experienced in Amer- cially entered the war, it had stationed hundreds of
ica at this point. This statement, however, also un- thousands of soldiers in the area. As J. M. Roberts
derscores the war theme. War, by its very nature, notes in his Twentieth Century: The History of the
generally involves hate. It is hard for a soldier to World, 1901 to 2000, “In 1968 there were over half
kill his enemies if he does not harbor some nega- a million American servicemen in Vietnam.” In or-
tive feelings toward them. For this reason, many der to meet these numbers, the United States gov-
governments, including the United States during the ernment relied on the Selective Service system to
Vietnam War, created propaganda that was de- conscript young American men into the military.
signed to breed hatred of the North Vietnamese.
When Ostriker uses the phrase “make hate,” she is At this point, one can see that the poet is wor-
referring to this deliberate attempt to create a neg- ried about the destiny of American males. Through-
ative view of another country or race during a war. out the poem, Ostriker notes the male focus on
strength, competition, and aggression, all factors
The poem also relies on some images of mil- that make a good soldier. By associating the boy
itary equipment to underscore the war theme. In the
last stanza, the poet is observing the scenery on
their bike ride back from the swimming pool. She
notes that they ride with “A big wind at our backs,
it is lovely, the maple boughs / ride up and down
like ships.” In another poem, this observation could
be attributed to the poet’s creativity, comparing the
bobbing tree branches to ships rocking gently on
the waves in a large body of water. In the context
Volume 19 103
His Speed and Strength
in the poem directly with military weaponry such tention, something that is troubling her deep within
as rockets, the poet is noting that this ten-year-old her psyche before she can fully put her finger on
boy may someday be groomed for military service. what it is.
To better understand the poet’s fear for the Ostriker’s poem “His Speed and Strength”
boy, one must examine certain aspects of the poet’s could be such a poem. It was published in the col-
own life, namely, the birth of her son, Gabriel. As lection The Mother/Child Papers in 1980, ten years
Judith Pierce Rosenberg notes in her 1993 profile after Ostriker’s son was born, ten years after four
of Ostriker in Belles Lettres, Ostriker started the students were shot at Kent State for protesting the
book after the birth of her son, “a few days after Vietnam War, and just a little more than ten years
the United States invaded Cambodia and four stu- after Martin Luther King was assassinated. In the
dent protesters were shot by members of the Na- same year that her son was born, the first Women’s
tional Guard at Kent State University.” Ostriker is Equality Day was celebrated in commemoration of
worried in general for all American males, but the fiftieth anniversary of women’s right to vote.
specifically for her son. If he grows up a stereo- The decade between the birth of Ostriker’s son and
typical male, encouraged to be competitive and ag- the publication of this poem, in other words, was
gressive, he might be recruited to be a soldier, as saturated with events that could well have caused a
the boy in the poem surely will. If, on the other sense of unease in anyone’s psyche. The times were
hand, her son tries to protest this cultural stereo- turbulent, and Ostriker, a feminist, was giving birth
type and speak out against war itself, he could be in the middle of it, trying to make sense of it all.
shot, as the student protesters were. Ostriker seems
to be saying that the male emphasis on speed and Ostriker had to come to grips with the horren-
strength can ultimately work against them by lead- dous atrocities of a highly criticized and protested
ing to their early deaths. international war, while on a national level, she had
to face the rampant racism that had infected her so-
During the course of writing her book, Ostriker ciety, a fact that many white people had hitherto
and the rest of the American public witnessed some tried to ignore. But even more particular to this
changes in the Selective Service system. The prac- poem is what women had to face on a more per-
tice of active drafting during peacetime ended in sonal level. Women of Ostriker’s generation were
1973, after the Vietnam War, providing some hope trying to redefine themselves and their roles, not
for mothers like Ostriker that their sons might be only in society but also on a much smaller and more
safe. However, in 1980, the year that Ostriker pub- intimate scale, in the family.
lished her poem, the United States reinstituted draft
registration, giving the government the right to The image of the 1950s mother still influenced
draft young men in the future, if necessary, for many soon-to-be-married women of Ostriker’s age,
wartime purposes, validating once again the fears but that image was in the process of collapsing; and
of mothers such as Ostriker. yet no other icon had successfully been adopted.
Few young 1970s feminists had any clues as to how
Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on “His Speed women were, on one hand, supposed to demand
and Strength,” in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003. equal rights in a traditionally patriarchal society
and, on the other, to raise a family. At times, these
Joyce Hart two concepts seemed diametrically opposed. The
emerging feminist fought for her right for advanced
Hart is a published writer who focuses on lit- degrees, for better wages in the workforce, as well
erary themes. In this essay, Hart examines Os- as for the controversial right to abortion. The fem-
triker’s poem as a way of better understanding the inist sentiment in those early days was often inter-
effects of mid-twentieth-century social movements preted to mean that women should not marry at an
and the Vietnam War on the role of motherhood. early age as their 1940s and 1950s mothers had but
rather that they should gain access to the business
Ostriker, the author of “His Speed and Strength,” world that had previously been dominated by their
has often stated that she views the writing of poetry male counterparts. The consequence of this belief
more as a diagnostic tool than as a remedy. Although often meant that women delayed childbirth, if they
both concepts are closely connected, Ostriker makes had children at all. This left other women, those
it clear that she relies on her poetry to tell her what who had decided to marry and to have children
she is feeling rather than to cure a specific distress early in their lives, with a sense of guilt, as if they
that she is aware of. Her poems, in other words, in- had betrayed their own feminist beliefs. Hidden
form her. The words that bubble up to the surface
in the form of a poem announce, or call to her at-
104 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
somewhere in their psyches was the idea that hav- She not only
ing children was somehow detrimental to women’s embraces motherhood here,
progress. The role of motherhood tended to define she takes motherhood to a
the unliberated women of the previous generations. higher realm. It is through
motherhood, she states,
So while many women of Ostriker’s genera- that people create these
tion were beginning to celebrate the delay of child- new little souls and train
bearing, believing that having children was one of them in new ways. Thus
the reasons women were being held back, Ostriker motherhood becomes a
gave birth to a son. In doing so, she appeared to be sacred duty.”
going against the tide of feminism, so through her
poem, she tries to analyze how she feels about that is portrayed is one of comfort. This woman is
motherhood. Does motherhood entrap her? Does it comfortable in her role as mother.
deny her freedom? Has she turned her back on fem-
inism by giving birth? It is possible that these were She remains comfortable even when her son
the questions that were surfacing in her mind as passes her. The narrator first states that the mother
Ostriker wrote this poem. is “ahead” in the bicycle race for home, but then her
son catches her and shortly afterward buzzes past
From the very first line of the poem, rather than her. With this portrayal of the so-called bicycle race,
bemoaning motherhood, Ostriker celebrates it Ostriker reflects on the natural path of parenthood.
through the figure of her son. She begins by hon- The mother is ahead, in a sense, when the child is
oring him. She admires his ten-year-old speed and first born. Her newborn baby is totally dependent
strength, which, by the way, she emphasizes by us- on her and must learn all the basics of survival: to
ing this same phrase as the title of her poem, mak- eat, to walk, to run, to talk. Then as both the mother
ing it the focus of the entire piece. She honors his and the child age, the young boy gains strength and
power not just because he is blessed with it but also eventually passes her. But this is not something to
because his strength challenges her in a lot of dif- regret. This is something to celebrate. Mother and
ferent ways. The challenge that his youthful energy child, although they share a path for a while, have
offers is not a typical one in which either the son different lives to lead. As she sits back on the seat
or the mother will be singularly victorious, but of her bike, with the “Times crossword” puzzle
rather one in which they both will benefit. Ostriker “tucked” in her “rack,” her son flashes past her, fast
makes this clear by having the narrator of the poem as the “Green Hornet.” Her son has energy to burn.
not only admire her son’s strength but to be in- She is in more of a meditative mode. He pierces
spired by it. time in his rush toward the future. In contrast, she,
in the middle years of her life, reflects equally on
To begin with, here is a woman, a mother, rid- her experience of the past and the dreams, as em-
ing a bike. This is an act which in the 1970s was bodied in her son, that lie “ahead” of her.
still considered a child’s activity. The adult sport of
biking had not yet been popularized. So for readers With these images, Ostriker shows that bear-
of this poem, when it was first published, the im- ing children does not hold her back from becom-
age of a mom on a bike racing her son paints a dif- ing fully developed and confident as a woman any
ferent picture than it might today. To the reader of more than a mother might hold back her son from
the 1970s, this immediately portrays a woman who maturing. Mother and child are separate entities,
is filled with awe of a child’s world. The woman in each surviving off their own strength but at the
this poem is very comfortable with herself; to fur- same time encouraging one another through their
ther this image, the narrator confides that not only separate journeys. Children do not erode a woman’s
is this mother racing her son on a bicycle, she is rid-
ing with “no hands.” Some readers might interpret
this by stating that she is showing off. However,
someone else reading this poem might conclude that
this woman must either be very confident in herself
or that she does not really care about who will win
the race between her son and herself. Another pos-
sibility might be that this mother is merely enjoy-
ing her sense of freedom in acting childlike.
Whatever image comes to mind, the overall feeling
Volume 19 105
His Speed and Strength
role, Ostriker appears to be saying, they enhance him as he “peels away,” as if he has been attached
it. They give as much as they take. to her but is learning to pull away on his own. He
is her son. He came into this world through her, but
Furthering this idea is the next image that Os- he is becoming his own “rocket and pilot.” He has
triker advances in the second stanza of her poem. developed his own means to propel himself and is
Here the mother and the son are at the swimming steering that vehicle into the future.
pool, where the mother watches her son perform
his “neat one-and-a-half flips” off the diving board. Her poem, in the end, shows that the role of
She congratulates him with the words “oh, brave.” mother is not diametrically opposed to feminist be-
The narrator demonstrates the mother’s feelings by liefs. Rather, it might more clearly personify them.
having her refer to Juno, the goddess and wife of Feminism does not mean that women should “race”
Jupiter, and Oceanus, the god of the sea. In other against men and try to beat them. It does not mean
words, in experiencing the courage of her son, the that women who enjoy motherhood relinquish their
mother feels godlike; for it was through her that opportunity to make their voices heard in the world.
her son entered this world. Motherhood, Ostriker’s Feminism, as found in this poem, might well mean
poem states, has elevated her; has, in some way, that women and men can work together; that nur-
enhanced her mortality; has blessed her. It is off of turing others is not a weakness but rather a strength;
her, as if she is the springboard (the diving board), and that motherhood, although it comes without a
that her son jumps, soars, and spins, exhibiting his salary and does not require a college degree, is an
bravery to the world. honorable and self-satisfying profession.
As depicted in the actions of some children Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on “His Speed and
nearby, Ostriker touches on the confusion of war Strength,” in Poetry for Students, Gale, 2003.
and racism that was infiltrating her world when she
wrote this poem. However, through the children Amy Williams
(and obliquely through motherhood) she brings the
concept of hope into her poem. She watches “some In the following essay, Williams discusses Os-
black and white boys wrestling,” a sight that could triker’s life and writings.
have potentially represented conflict; but Ostriker
turns this conflict into fun by stating that the boys Like several women poets in her generation,
were “joking, teammates,” who were using the act including Sandra Gilbert, Adrienne Rich, Audre
of wrestling as an excuse to touch each other, thus Lorde, and Alice Walker, Alicia Ostriker also
proving that “it is not necessary to make hate.” If writes as a literary critic. Clear and lyrical, her po-
there is any hope in the world that people will come etry combines intelligence and passion. Speaking
to accept one another and turn their hate into love in the tradition of Walt Whitman, she recreates the
and sharing, Ostriker sees it in the children. She American experience in each of her volumes. Her
not only embraces motherhood here, she takes voice is personal, honest, and strong; her poetry in-
motherhood to a higher realm. It is through moth- corporates family experiences, social and political
erhood, she states, that people create these new lit- views, and a driving spirit that speaks for growth
tle souls and train them in new ways. Thus and, at times, with rage.
motherhood becomes a sacred duty.
Ostriker’s urban background contributes to the
In the third stanza, Ostriker elaborates this point forcefulness of her work. Born in Brooklyn on 11
by referring to the poet Walt Whitman’s thoughts November 1937, she was a “Depression baby” and
as espoused in his “A Song of Myself.” In that grew up in Manhattan housing projects. Her par-
poem, Whitman is talking to a child who asks him ents, David and Beatrice Linnick Suskin, both
to explain what grass is. In trying to clarify it to the earned degrees in English from Brooklyn College.
child, Whitman meanders through many different Her father worked for the New York City Depart-
thoughts, but in the end he uses the youngest sprout ment of Parks; her mother, who wrote poetry and
of grass, the regeneration of grass, as a symbol that read William Shakespeare and Robert Browning to
there really is no such thing as death. In the same her daughter, tutored students in English and math
way, Ostriker implies, children bring immortality to and later became a folk-dance teacher. Alicia began
their parents. What possible calling could be higher writing poetry in childhood and enjoyed drawing as
or more purposeful than that? well. Her earliest hope was to be an artist: she stud-
ied art as a teenager and young adult and continues
She then ends her poem with her son asking if to carry a sketchbook on her travels. Two of her
it is all right with her if he “takes off.” She watches books—Songs (1969) and A Dream of Springtime
(1979)—feature her graphics in the cover designs.
106 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
Ostriker received her B.A. in English from Her voice is personal,
Brandeis University in 1959, and her M.A. and honest, and strong; her
Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (1961, poetry incorporates family
1964). Her dissertation, on William Blake, became experiences, social and
her first critical book, Vision and Verse in William political views, and a
Blake (1965); she later edited and annotated driving spirit that speaks
Blake’s complete poems for Penguin (1977). Blake for growth and, at times,
has continued to influence Ostriker as a person and with rage.”
poet. Ostriker began teaching at Rutgers University
in 1965 and now holds the rank of full professor. nam War. The book begins after the birth of her
son, Gabriel, in 1970, but also focuses on the other
Much of the work in her first collection, Songs, members of her family: her husband, Jeremiah P.
was written during her student years. The voice is Ostriker, an astrophysicist, to whom she was mar-
relatively formal, reflecting the influences of John ried in December 1958; and her daughters, Rebecca
Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and W. H. Auden, and Eve, born in 1963 and 1965. Mary Kinzie in
as well as Whitman and Blake. Imagist and free- the American Poetry Review commends Ostriker
verse poems mingle somewhat tentatively with tra- on how her “work details the achievement of a con-
ditional, metrical poetry. nection between personal history and public fact”
(July/August 1981). James McGowan in the Hiram
In Ostriker’s second and third volumes of Poetry Review (Fall/Winter 1982) calls the book “a
poetry—the chapbook Once More out of Darkness product of a whole person, which is not to say a
(1971) and A Dream of Springtime—a more per- perfect person, but one alive to present, past, fu-
sonal voice emerges, which captures the mind of ture, to the body and its mystifying requirements
the reader more readily. For these books, Ostriker and capacities.” Confronting her roles as mother,
composed consistently in free verse. The title poem wife, and professor, Ostriker explores her identity
of Once More Out of Darkness is a meditation on as a woman. As she points out in the essay “A Wild
pregnancy and childbirth. A Dream of Springtime Surmise: Motherhood and Poetry” in her book
begins with a sequence of autobiographical poems Writing Like a Woman (1983), “the advantage of
designed to enable her to exorcise her childhood and motherhood for a woman artist is that it puts her in
become “freed from it.” The organization of the immediate and inescapable contact with the sources
book moves concentrically from the self, to the fam- of life, death, beauty, growth and corruption.”
ily, to teaching experiences, to the larger world of
politics and history. Reviewer Valerie Trueblood The Mother/Child Papers was a ten-year pro-
calls Ostriker “one of the most intelligent and lyri- ject. At its inception, Ostriker had only a vague idea
cal of American poets,” who has given herself the of what she wanted to accomplish; she struggled
“difficult assignment” of creating “an intellectually intermittently with it while teaching and raising her
bearable picture of domestic security” while at the family. The offer of the Los Angeles poet and ed-
same time assigning herself “the equally ticklish itor of Momentum Press, Bill Mohr, to publish the
(for poetry) job of publicizing national folly and soft manuscript if she could finish it, enabled her to de-
spots of the culture” (Iowa Review, Spring 1982). fine its ultimate shape. The book is experimental,
divided into four sections, all of which build on the
By the end of the book Ostriker emerges from artist’s experience as mother.
the confined walls of her past and finds herself in
the spring of her life. The title poem “A Dream of The first section, written in prose, juxtaposes
Springtime” reflects her movement into spring and the impact of the Cambodian invasion and the
its cold, watery vigor that wakes her senses: “The shooting of student protestors at Kent State Uni-
creek, swollen and excited from the melting / versity with the birth of Ostriker’s son in the ster-
Freshets that are trickling into it everywhere / Like
a beautiful woman unafraid is dashing / Over the
stones.” Nonetheless, Ostriker calls her attempt to
reconcile herself to her childhood only “partially
successful” but an important step in her develop-
ment as a poet.
Not until The Mother/Child Papers (1980) did
Ostriker fully reach her medium. In this book she
contrasts the events of her own life with the Viet-
Volume 19 107
His Speed and Strength
What
Do I Read
Next?
• Betty Friedan’s controversial The Feminine Your Relationships (1992) is a bestselling self-
Mystique (1963) helped to launch the modern help book that discusses the differences between
women’s movement. The book shatters the myth male and female styles of communication.
that post–World War II housewives were happy
taking care of their husbands and children. • Ostriker’s poetry collection titled The Imaginary
Friedan labeled this misconception the feminine Lover (1986), like many of her works, explores
mystique and used her book to reveal the pain feminist themes, including the relations between
and frustration that many women faced when men and women.
their needs were placed below the needs of their
families. • Ostriker’s Stealing the Language: The Emer-
gence of Women Poets in America (1986) is her
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915) de- best-known work of feminist literary criticism.
scribes a feminist utopia. In the idealistic world This controversial book explores the idea that
that Gilman creates, women rule their own coun- women’s writing is distinct from men’s writing
try, where they do not need men to reproduce. because it focuses on issues that are central to
Three male explorers from the United States find the female gender.
this isolated country and name it Herland. The
men are surprised to find that the women are • In her essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), Vir-
equal to them and are shocked when the women ginia Woolf argues that for women writers to
do not respond to the same types of charms that achieve the same greatness that male writers
work on women in the United States. have, these women need an income and privacy.
In addition, Woolf discusses the fact that the ide-
• John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are alistic and powerful portrayals of women in fic-
from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving tion have historically differed from the slave-like
Communication and Getting What You Want in situations that many women face in real life.
ile environment of an American hospital, where, ity that it might “implode . . . back to the original
during labor, she was given an unwanted spinal in- fireball” it once was. As this discussion continues,
jection that deprived her of the ability to “give birth her mind closes in on her own universe and her fam-
to my child, myself.” Ostriker recreates the per- ily’s private world: “Gabriel runs upstairs. Rebecca
sonal world of mother and infant in section 2, al- is reading. Eve takes the hat back, . . . / Outside my
ternating their voices and molding them together in window, the whole street dark and snowy.”
their own private sphere, separate from the rest of
the world yet vulnerable to its incursions: “We open Ostriker ties the work together in part 4 by
all the windows / the sunlight wraps us like gauze.” stressing the connection between motherhood and
art. In the final poem of the book, she recreates the
Part 3 of The Mother/Child Papers consists of experience of a woman in labor who enjoys her
a series of poems, written over a ten-year span, that pain and is “comfortable” as she “rides with this
captures the environment of the family and confronts work / for hours, for days / for the duration of this
the issue of “devouring Time, an enemy familiar to / dream.” The mother is seen as the source of life’s
all mothers” (Writing Like a Woman). In “The energy and of the universe beginning its never-end-
Spaces” time is stressed, and the chaos of the out- ing process.
side world seems to threaten the secure nucleus of
the family. The speaker overhears her husband dis- Ostriker continues to confront her role as a
cussing “the mass of the universe” and the possibil- woman in her next collection of poems, A Woman
Under the Surface (1982). X. J. Kennedy com-
108 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
mended her “wit, verve and energy” (Poetry, ica (1986), the collection reflects the influences of
March 1983). Lynda Koolish called the book Rich and H. D. In The Imaginary Lover Ostriker
“Cool, cerebral, studied. Passionate visceral, im- confronts the fantasies, both beautiful and horrible,
mediate . . . cold and fiery at the same time . . . the that accompany womanhood. A long poem, “The
central metaphor of A Woman Under the Surface War of Men and Women” explores the difficulty
is a surfacing, emerging woman” (San Francisco of male-female relations as “an archeology of
Chronicle, 6 September 1983). pain.” Several poems look at mother-daughter re-
lationships from the perspective of the mother and
Written while Ostriker was working on her that of the daughter; several are portraits of mar-
critical book Writing Like a Woman, this 1982 col- riage. In the final poem of this book, Ostriker cre-
lection clearly reflects the world of women’s po- ates a woman’s imaginary lover. Like the lovers in
etry and Ostriker’s indebtedness to it. The first H. D.’s poetry, he is androgynous: “Oh imaginary
poem, “The Waiting Room,” suggests the bond of lover, oh father-mother.” He is not, however, the
fear many women share: “We think of our breasts speaker’s male counterpart, but rather the “form in
and cervixes. / We glance, shading our eyelids, at the mind / On whom, as on a screen, I project de-
each other.” Ostriker imagines a female ritual: signs.” It is through this projected perception that
“Perhaps we should sit on the floor. / They might the speaker becomes “the flock of puffy doves / . . .
have music for us. A woman dancer / Might per- in a magician’s hat” capable of the liberty of flight.
form, in the center of the circle.” But the ritual is
not pleasant: “What would she do? / Would she Green Age (1989) is Ostriker’s most visionary
pretend to rip the breasts from her body?” Even this and most successful collection. As Gail Mazur
vision of unity is punctured as a woman’s scream wrote in Poetry, “The poems are expressions of the
permeates the room from inside the office; the hungry search for her real and spiritual place in the
scream suggests the need these women have to ex- world. . . . A tough empathy informs the poems—
press themselves and the satisfaction of a release she is no softer on others than she is on herself”
that is sometimes denied them. (July 1990).
In “The Exchange” a mysteriously powerful The three sections of the book confront per-
woman emerges from underwater to murder the sonal time, history and politics, and inner spiritual-
speaker’s children and husband. In “The Diver,” on ity. The speaker’s voice in many of these poems is
the other hand, as in Adrienne Rich’s poem “Div- full of an anger that requires healing transformation.
ing into the Wreck,” the female diver’s body “is The energy for survival is reflected through the fe-
saying a kind of prayer.” Ostriker’s diver feels safe: male character of “A Young Woman, a Tree,” who
“Nobody laughs, under the surface. / Nobody says has withstood her harsh surroundings and has de-
the diver is a fool.” Losing her name yet finding veloped a “Mutant appetite for pollutants.” She is
her space and her identity, “she extends her arms that city tree that can “feel its thousand orgasms
and kicks her feet,” escaped from “the heat” and each spring” and “stretch its limbs during the windy
confinement of a surface world. Other poems in days.” This woman takes a hungry bite of the world
this volume touch on art—as in the poems to Henri and experiences its pleasures, despite the pain of en-
Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet— croaching time. Another theme is the need for fem-
and myth, as in Ostriker’s rewritten versions of the inist spirituality in the face of traditional religion.
stories of Eros and Psyche, Orpheus and Euridice, Ostriker suffers in her Jewish heritage, for as a
and Odysseus and Penelope. woman she is both the “vessel” of religious lineage
and deprived of spiritual participation in male-dom-
Ostriker continues to speak in her feminist voice inated Jewish ritual and intellectual life. “A Medi-
in The Imaginary Lover (1986) and goes one step tation in Seven Days” considers and challenges the
further. In an anonymous review in Publisher’s roles of women and femaleness within Judaism,
Weekly, her poetry was described as “a poetry of concluding with a vision of potential change: “Fear-
commitment, not so much to womankind as to hu- ful, I see my hand is on the latch / I am the woman,
mankind. . . . When the voice of this rational, schol- and about to enter.” The final poem of Green Age,
arly woman rises to crescendo, a tide of sweet human “Move,” captures the mood of Ostriker’s continu-
emotion lifts the poem into the realm of true expe- ing quest for identity as woman and poet:
rience with Keatsian intensity” (24 October 1984).
When we reach the place we’ll know
Written while Ostriker was researching her We are in the right spot, somehow, like a breath
second feminist book of criticism, Stealing the Lan- Entering a singer’s chest, that shapes itself
guage: the Emergence of Women Poets in Amer- For the song that is to follow.
Volume 19 109
His Speed and Strength
While her work is Excess: My William Blake,” Ostriker traces the his-
grounded in her identity as tory of her “romance with Blake”:
both woman and feminist,
her poems are not restricted What did I like? First of all, Blake had the reputa-
tion of being “mad.” I liked that. He wrote as an out-
to the recording of female sider; I liked that because I was one myself. His
experiences or white-hot intellectual energy excited me, along with
his flashing wit and irony, his capacity for joy and
consciousness.” delight.
The poetry of Alicia Ostriker consistently chal- She continues to detail her recognition of
lenges limitations. For discovery to take place there Blake’s own masculinist biases which propelled her
must be movement, and Ostriker refuses to stand towards a search for the women poets who could
still; each volume tries to uncover anew what must articulate what Blake could not. Reflecting on her
be learned in order to gain wisdom, experience, and successful search, she recounts, “I found a radical
identity. She is a poet who breaks down walls. collective voice and vision equivalent to Blake’s—
equivalently outrageous, critical of our mind-
Source: Amy Williams, “Alicia Ostriker,” in Dictionary of forged manacles, determined to explore and rethink
Literary Biography, Vol. 120, American Poets Since World everything, and inventing poetic forms to embody
War II, Third Series, edited by R. S. Gwynn, Gale Research, new visions.” Ostriker has gone on from this
1992, pp. 239–42. epiphany to write two significant books which de-
tail her growing passion for the works of women
Anne F. Herzog poets: Writing Like a Woman (1983) and Stealing
the Language of Poetry: The Emergence of
In the following essay, Herzog discusses Os- Women’s Poetry in America (1986). The latter is
triker’s role as both poet and critic. particularly noteworthy in its ambitious mapping
of an identifiable tradition of women’s poetry in
Throughout her career, poet-critic Alicia Os- America, beginning with Anne Bradstreet and con-
triker has resisted the pressures which privilege one tinuing to the 1980s. According to James E. B.
creative identity over the other, poet before the Breslin, “Stealing the Language is literary history
critic or critic before the poet. Her life’s writing— as it should be written—based on an extraordinary
five scholarly books, eight books of poetry and a range of reading, written with passionate involve-
ninth book (The Nakedness of the Fathers: Bibli- ment, grounded in acute readings of particular po-
cal Visions and Revisions, 1994) which mar- ems and filled with provocative general statement.”
velously blends both prose and poetry—steadfastly
refuses the prevalent cultural rift between poets and Critical responses to Ostriker’s poetry are
scholars. In a beautifully crafted autobiographical quick to remark on what feminist scholar Elaine
essay, “Five Uneasy Pieces” (1997), she writes: “I Showalter calls her “unwavering intelligence” as
have tried to make my criticism and poetry feed well as her “compassionate and ironic” voice. In
each other. To write intelligent poems and pas- terms of focus and thematic concerns, her books of
sionate criticism.” Reviewing her critical and po- poetry vary widely. While her work is grounded in
etic accomplishments, one cannot help but her identity as both woman and feminist, her po-
conclude that she has succeeded. ems are not restricted to the recording of female
experiences or consciousness. As a Publisher’s
Her critical-scholarly career began with the Weekly reviewer comments, “Hers is a poetry of
publication of Vision and Verse in William Blake commitment, not so much to womankind as to hu-
(1965), a meticulous analysis of Blake’s prosody mankind.” Diana Hume George notes that Os-
which still serves as an invaluable resource in the triker’s “prophetic” vision “makes her return
study of Blake’s technique. Ostriker’s choice of endlessly to the ordinary, phenomenal world, in-
Blake as a poetic mentor reveals much about her habited by women and men like herself, where the
early (and enduring) poetic tastes. In “The Road of real work must be done.”
In “Five Uneasy Pieces,” Ostriker describes
the affirmative, life-embracing vision under gird-
ing poetry:
. . . there was always a part of me for which every-
thing—everything, the brick building of public hous-
ing, cracked sidewalks, delivery trucks, subways,
110 Poetry for Students
His Speed and Strength
luminous sky of clouds, wicked people—was spec- where she may be heading. Refuting accusations of
tacle. Glorious theater. The vitality of those hard blasphemy, witchery, ignorance or insanity, Os-
streets, poverty and ignorance bawling through our triker writes:
lives, was a sight to behold. The swing and punch of
the bad language I was told not to imitate was live I remember things, and sometimes I remember
music to my ears, far more interesting than proper My time when I was powerful, bringing birth
English. Literature—any art—exists to embody such My time when I was just, composing law
perception. Exists to praise what is. For nothing. My time playing before the throne
When my name was woman of valor
Thus, we find in one of her earliest books, “Son- When my name was wisdom
net. To Tell the Truth,” an ironic poem about the And what if I say the Torah is
brick Housing Authority buildings” of her childhood My well of living waters
in Brooklyn, New York, “For whose loveliness no Mine
soul had planned”; or alternately, her meditation on
“the kindliness of old men . . . something incommu- Source: Anne F. Herzog, “Ostriker, Alicia,” in Contempo-
nicably vast,” as she remembers the lost grandfa- rary Women Poets, edited by Pamela L. Shelton, St. James
thers and older male friends who nurtured the young Press, 1998, pp. 271–73.
girl-child, “Petted me, taught me checkers patiently.”
She concludes, “It seems to me then God’s a grand- Sources
father; / Infinite tenderness, infinite distance— / I
don’t a minute mean that I believe this! / It’s but a Cook, Pamela, “Secrets and Manifestos: Alicia Ostriker’s
way to talk about old men” (“Old Men”). Poetry and Politics,” in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review,
Vol. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 80–86.
Ostriker writes poems about marriage, strug-
gles for intimacy, childbirth, the necessary, painful Heller, Janet Ruth, “Exploring the Depths of Relationships
separations between parent and child, teaching, art, in Alicia Ostriker’s Poetry,” in Literature and Psychology,
aging, losses, desire, and more. Throughout, her Vol. 38, No. 1–2, 1992, pp. 71–83.
love of the world is unabated. In “Hating the
World,” she tells a former student, “Do you know, Ostriker, Alicia, “His Speed and Strength,” in The Little
to hate the world / Makes you my enemy?,” while Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968–1998, University of
in “The Death of Ghazals,” we read: “Where Pittsburgh Press, 1998, p. 44.
there’s life there’s hope. We bequeath this hope /
To our children, along with our warm tears.” Os- —, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s
triker’s persistent poetic faith in the face of hard Poetry in America, Beacon Press, 1986.
truths culminates in her 1996 collection, The Crack
in Everything, where among other poems of beauty —, Writing Like a Woman, University of Michigan
and survival she includes “The Mastectomy Po- Press, 1983.
ems,” created from her own experience with breast
cancer. “You never think it will happen to you, / Roberts, J. M., Twentieth Century: The History of the World,
What happens every day to other women,” she be- 1901 to 2000, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 673.
gins. In them, Ostriker fulfills her own poetic man-
date: “to press the spirit forth / Unrepentant, Rosenberg, Judith Pierce, “Profile: Alicia Suskin Ostriker,”
struggling to praise / Our hopeless bodies, our in Belles Lettres, Vol. 8, No. 3, Spring 1993, pp. 26–29.
hopeless world” (“The Book of Life”).
Williams, Amy, “Alicia Ostriker,” in Dictionary of Literary
Most recently, Ostriker’s poetry and criticism Biography, Vol. 120, American Poets Since World War II,
have focused on her identity as both woman and Third Series, Gale Research, 1992, pp. 239–42.
Jew. She states in People of the Book: Thirty Schol-
ars Reflect on Their Jewish Identity that she feels Further Reading
“a preoccupation amounting to obsession with Ju-
daism, the Bible, God.” In “Five Uneasy Pieces,” Helgesen, Sally, The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of
Ostriker places her current work “in the tradition Leadership, Currency/Doubleday, 1995.
of midrash,” retelling the Biblical narratives in
search of a spiritual home within Judaism. The Helgesen explores how women’s management styles
Nakedness of the Fathers (1994) is a remarkable differ from their male counterparts. The author says
testament to the passion and intelligence of Os- that women, who tend to lead via a relationship web,
triker’s career, ample evidence of the poetic and are better suited for the modern business environment
critical distances she has traveled and a clue to than men, who tend to lead via old-fashioned hierar-
chies. The book also provides in-depth profiles of
four women executives who became successful as a
result of their female qualities of leadership.
Hill, Gareth S., Masculine and Feminine: The Natural Flow
of Opposites in the Psyche, Shambhala Publications, 1992.
Volume 19 111
His Speed and Strength
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the Moir, Anne, and David Jessel, Brain Sex: The Real Differ-
masculine and the feminine, drawing on the original ence between Men and Women, Lyle Stuart, 1991.
psychological theories of Carl Jung as well as on non-
Jungian approaches. In this groundbreaking book, Moir, a geneticist, and
Jessel, a BBC-TV writer-producer, discuss the dif-
Kallen, Stuart A., ed., The 1980s, Cultural History of the ferences between male and female brains, identify-
United States through the Decades series, Lucent Books, ing the innate abilities of each.
1999.
Schneir, Miriam, ed., Feminism in Our Time: The Essen-
Each book in this series examines a specific decade tial Writings, World War II to the Present, Vintage Books,
through theme-based chapters, which place events in 1994.
a cultural context. Among other topics, the 1980s vol-
ume discusses the Reagan presidency, the fall of Com- This anthology focuses on contemporary writings
munism, the rise of Wall Street and corporate power, from the second half of the twentieth century and fea-
and the computer revolution. The book also includes tures fifty selections, including many excerpts from
a bibliography and a detailed chronology of events. longer works. Schneir also provides commentary on
the writings.
112 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
The first version of “Ithaka” was probably written C. P. Cavafy
in 1894. Cavafy revised the poem in 1910, and it 1911
was first published in 1911. The first English trans-
lation was published in 1924, and there have been
a number of different translations since then. The
poem can be found in Cavafy’s Collected Poems,
translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard,
edited by George Savidis, Princeton University
Press, 1980.
“Ithaka” is an unrhymed poem of five stanzas
that employ conversational, everyday language.
The narrator, probably a man who has traveled a
lot, addresses either Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s
epic poem the Odyssey, or an imaginary modern
traveler or reader. The narrator tells the traveler that
what is really important is not Ithaka, the island
home that was the goal of Odysseus’s years of wan-
dering, but the journey itself. It is the journey that
must be fully enjoyed at every moment, using all
the resources of senses and intellect, because the
goal itself is likely to be disappointing.
Cavafy enjoys a reputation as one of the finest
of modern Greek poets. “Ithaka” is one of his best-
known poems and is considered to express his out-
look on life.
Author Biography
Constantine Peter Cavafy was born on April 17,
1863, in Alexandria, Egypt. He was a Greek citizen,
113
Ithaka
the ninth and last child of Peter (an importer and full of adventure, full of discovery. 5
exporter) and Hariklia Cavafy. His parents had set- Laistrygonians, Cyclops, 10
tled in Alexandria in the mid-1850s. After his fa- angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
ther died in 1870, Cavafy’s mother moved the you’ll never find things like that on your way
family to Liverpool, England, where her two eldest as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
sons managed the family business. as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
From the age of nine to sixteen, Cavafy lived Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
in England, where he developed a love for the writ- wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
ing of William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and unless you bring them along inside your soul,
Oscar Wilde. The family business did not prosper, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
and the family was compelled to move back to
Alexandria in 1880. Two years later, Cavafy’s Hope your road is a long one. 15
mother and some of his eight siblings moved again, May there be many summer mornings when, 20
to Constantinople. It was in Constantinople that with what pleasure, what joy,
Cavafy wrote his first poems. you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time:
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
In 1885, having received little formal educa- to buy fine things,
tion, Cavafy eventually rejoined his older brothers mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
in Alexandria and became a newspaper correspon- sensual perfume of every kind—
dent for Telegraphos. In 1888, he began working as many sensual perfumes as you can;
as his brother’s assistant at the Egyptian Stock Ex- and may you visit many Egyptian cities
change. Within four years, he became a clerk at the to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Ministry of Public Works. Cavafy remained at the
ministry for the next thirty years, eventually be- Keep Ithaka always in your mind. 25
coming its assistant director. He retired in 1922. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. 30
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Although he began publishing poems in 1896 Better if it lasts for years,
and continued to do so until 1932, a year before his so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
death, it was a long time before Cavafy received wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
much literary recognition beyond Alexandria. In not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
his lifetime, he did not offer a single volume of po- Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
etry for sale. He printed pamphlets of his work pri- Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
vately and distributed them to friends and relatives. She has nothing left to give you now.
Only in his later years did he become sufficiently
well known for Western visitors to seek him out in And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled 35
Alexandria. you.
In 1926, Cavafy received the Order of the Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
Phoenix from the Greek government. In 1930, he you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas
was appointed to the International Committee for
the Rupert Brooke memorial statue that was placed mean.
on the island of Skyros.
Poem Summary
On April 29, 1933, eleven years after leaving
the ministry, Cavafy died of cancer of the larynx. Stanza 1
The first collected edition of his poems was “Ithaka” begins with the poet addressing the
published in 1935 and first translated into English reader directly in the second person, as “you,” and
in 1948. In subsequent years, Cavafy became rec- offering a piece of advice. The character addressed
ognized as one of the foremost Greek poets of the is not identified. He could be Odysseus, the hero
twentieth century. of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, but the poet is
also addressing any reader of the poem.
Poem Text
The poet states that as the traveler sets out on
As you set out for Ithaka his journey, he must hope that it is a long one, full
hope your road is a long one, of adventure and discovery. The destination of the
journey is Ithaka. Ithaka is the island off the west-
ern coast of Greece to which Odysseus returned af-
ter the Trojan war. Odysseus’s journey was a long
and difficult one. It was ten years before he was
able to rejoin his wife Penelope in Ithaka. However,
Ithaka in this poem can also be understood as the
114 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
destination of any journey, and it can be further un- ports were centers of trade in the ancient world.
derstood metaphorically as a journey through life. The poet states that many beautiful things may be
purchased there, including precious stones such as
In line 4, the poet mentions two of the obsta- mother of pearl and coral, and every kind of per-
cles that Odysseus encountered in the Odyssey. First fume. The poet also hopes the reader may visit
are the Laistrygonians, who were half-men and half- Egyptian cities and learn from the scholars who live
giants, who devoured many of Odysseus’s crew. there. In the ancient world, Egypt was a center of
Second are the Cyclops, who were giants with just learning, especially its capital city, Alexandria,
one eye, placed in the middle of their foreheads. which was one of the largest cities in the world and
One of the Cyclops, Polyphemus, took Odysseus contained the largest library.
and his men prisoner and ate six of them before
Odysseus escaped with the remaining six men. Stanza 3
In line 5, the poet mentions another of the The first line of this stanza contains another
forces that obstructed Odysseus’s return. This is piece of advice. Odysseus, or any traveler on a jour-
Poseidon, who was the Greek god of the sea. He is ney, must always keep Ithaka in mind, because it
referred to as angry because in the Odyssey Posei- is his or her final destination. The traveler will cer-
don was angry that Odysseus had blinded Polyphe- tainly arrive there. But, says the poet, do not hurry
mus, who was Poseidon’s son. the journey. It is better if the journey lasts for years,
so that the traveler is old by the time he reaches
In the Odyssey, each of these three types of be- home and also wealthy from all he has accumu-
ings are powerful and seek to delay or destroy lated on his travels. Then, he will not expect Ithaka
Odysseus. But, in line 5 of “Ithaka,” the poet bids to make him rich.
his reader not to be afraid of them. In lines 6 and
7, he explains why. If the traveler keeps his The poet states that it is enough that Ithaka was
thoughts “raised high,” he will never encounter any the reason for making the journey in the first place.
challenge resembling those monsters. The poet is Without it, Odysseus or other voyagers would
implying that it is always necessary to be optimistic never have started. When Odysseus finally does ar-
and hopeful. rive, the city has lost its charm for him; he finds
less pleasure in being there then what he had hoped
Lines 8–11 repeat the same idea with one vari- for and imagined.
ation. This time, the poet explains that Laistrygo-
nians, Cyclops, or Poseidon will not appear as long Stanza 4
as the traveler’s spirit and body are stirred by a
“rare excitement.” In another translation of the The poet reemphasizes the message of the pre-
poem, this phrase is rendered as “fine emotion”; vious stanza. If the traveler, having arrived home
yet another translation uses the phrase “noble emo- in Ithaka, finds it to be a poor place, it does not
tion.” The idea is that in order to ensure that he is mean that Ithaka has been deceptive. The traveler
not waylaid by monsters, the traveler must always has not been fooled because he will have become
continue to experience the thrill of being alive. wise and full of experience. He will therefore know
what is meant by Ithaka, and by all destinations—
Lines 12 and 13 add a caveat: such beings will all Ithakas—that people strive to reach. The impli-
only appear if the traveler summons them up from cation is that he will have learned that the prize is
within his own soul, if he allows them to dwell in- all in the experience of the journey, not the final
side him. destination.
Stanza 2 Themes
The poet returns to the hope expressed in line Life as a Journey
2 of the first stanza, that the traveler’s journey
(whether that of Odysseus or any reader of the The theme of the poem may be summed up in
poem) is a long one. He hopes, in line 2, that there one phrase: it is better to journey than to arrive.
will be many summers when the traveler feels joy Life should not be wasted in always contemplating
on the journey, when he see places he has never the goal of one’s endeavors or in building up hopes
seen before. and schemes for the future but in enjoying the jour-
ney. An obsession with the final goal can blind a
The poet then imagines various places where
a person might stop, such as a Phoenician trading
station. Phoenicia was the coastal district of ancient
Syria and is now the coast of modern Lebanon. Its
Volume 19 115
Ithaka
Topics for mind, there would be no reason to act at all, no rea-
Further son to embark on the journey of life.
Study
The poet has a recipe for enjoying the journey
• Compare and contrast Cavafy’s “Ithaka” with Lord that involves the cultivation of a certain habit of
Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” In what ways are mind. The whole person—body, mind, spirit, even
the two poems similar and how do they differ? soul—must be fully engaged in the life it is living.
A person must keep his or her “thoughts raised
• Read the sections of the Odyssey in which the high,” which means that the mind must not give in
Laistrygonians and the Cyclops appear. What do to melancholy or disappointment or the sordid as-
you think these creatures represented to Cavafy? pects of life. The poet may also have in mind the
Why did Cavafy choose to mention these, of all contemplation of art, which leads the mind to the
the obstacles that Odysseus encountered, in his higher levels of the human spirit, rather than allow-
poem? Write an essay explaining your choices. ing it to sink to the depths of which it is capable.
• It is often said that “life is a journey, not a des- Another prerequisite for happiness on the
tination.” What is meant by this phrase and what journey is what the poet calls “rare excitement.”
meaning might it have in your own life? This might be explained as a certain attitude to
the experiences that life produces. A person must
• Write your own poem to a modern Odysseus, or cultivate the ability to respond to situations and
any traveler, giving him what you think is the experiences as if they were entirely new and fresh,
most appropriate advice for his journey. Use the never before seen, and therefore an object of
form of Cavafy’s poem, including the use of the wonder and delight. The opposite would be to re-
second person, as a guide. spond in a tired, mundane way, influenced by habit
and custom.
• Describe a recent achievement of your own in
any field of endeavor, splitting the account into The last part of the recipe for a fulfilling jour-
two sections: the process (the journey) and the ney is to enjoy the sensual aspects of life (“as many
completed task (the destination). Decide which sensual perfumes as you can”), to value beautiful
was more valuable to you, the journey or the des- things (symbolized by the precious stones), and to
tination. Can you think of an occasion where you cultivate the intellect. The latter is suggested by the
did not achieve your intended goal but still found advice to learn and “go on learning” from the schol-
value in the process of trying to achieve it? ars in Egypt. The way this is phrased is significant.
A person can never say that he or she has learned
person to the real business of living, which is to enough. Learning is an ongoing process with no fi-
enjoy every minute that is available. nal end in sight.
There is also the hint that life can be disap- The advice given here could be summed up as
pointing. The goals people strive for, their Ithakas, the need to use everything that a human being has
may not yield what they hoped for. Therefore, it is been given to perceive, enjoy, and understand the
better not to have expectations. The poet counsels world. The aim is to live in the actualities of the
that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rain- present moment, not in the imagined future.
bow: Ithaka may be poor, with nothing to give. Per-
haps, he also implies that a person should not have The Odyssey
lofty ideals or strive to realize perfection in life,
whether for oneself or for society (as a political ac- Cavafy puts all this advice in context by set-
tivist might, for example). ting it against the background of the Odyssey, one
of the world’s great travel narratives. He reverses
Yet, it is human to have ambitions and expec- the meaning of the Odyssey while at the same time
tations, to strive to achieve. As the poet states in advancing a psychological interpretation of some
stanza 3, without having an “Ithaka,” a goal, in of its episodes.
In Homer’s epic poem, Odysseus always longs
for home. He does not enjoy his long journey,
which is full of perils. Even the sensual delights
and the prospect of immortality offered him by the
enchantress Kalypso mean nothing to him. He con-
tinues to look to his home in Ithaka for peace, se-
curity, and love.
116 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
In “Ithaka,” however, the reverse is true: it is and 8 of stanza 1 is echoed by the repetition of “un-
the journey that is valued; the destination is dis- less” at the beginning of lines 12 and 13. The ef-
missed as of no importance. The first lines of the fect suggests that the traveler needs repeated
poem clearly show the ironic way Cavafy treats the reinforcement before he is ready to hear and ab-
Odyssey: sorb the message the poet offers.
As you set out for Ithaka, A similar effect is gained by the repetition in
hope your road is a long one, the second stanza of “sensual perfume” in lines 21
full of adventure, full of discovery. and 22. It helps to drive home a theme of the poem,
that fulfillment lies in the sensual experiences of
This is the opposite of what Odysseus was hop- the moment, not an imagined goal in the future.
ing for. He wanted a quick voyage home, not one
full of adventure. Historical Context
Cavafy also suggests that the monsters Odysseus Modern Greek Literature
encounters are all creations of the human mind.
Scholars identify the land of the Laistrygonians When Greece was under Turkish rule in the
with Sicily’s West Coast and the land of the Cy- eighteenth century, Greek literature virtually dis-
clops with an area near Naples called the Phlegrean appeared. It was awakened following the Greek
Fields. In “Ithaka,” however, the dwelling places War of Independence (1821–1827). As Greek na-
of these monsters are not physical places but states tional pride grew, there was a strong movement
of mind. If a man follows the poet’s prescription amongst writers to use the demotic form of the
for happiness, such personal demons will not arise Greek language. Demotic is the popular form of
in his psyche. The human mind has the power to Greek used by the ordinary person. However, there
create them and to dissolve them. were also many writers who passionately believed
in the preservation of the classical literary lan-
Style guage. The controversial debate continued through-
out the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
Metaphor Many Greek intellectuals argued that using the de-
motic language was the only way to preserve Greek
Although the island of Ithaka will always be literature and develop Greek culture. But, feelings
associated with the homeland of Odysseus, in this ran high on both sides. In 1903, university students
poem, Cavafy uses the place name in an additional rioted in Athens when a translation of the New Tes-
sense. Just as the journey to Ithaka is a metaphor tament in demotic Greek was serialized in a news-
for the human journey through life, so Ithaka is a paper. More riots followed several years later when
metaphor for all destinations. It represents all the Aeschylus’s ancient Greek trilogy the Oresteia was
goals and ideals that humans strive for, all the ex- performed in demotic Greek. The Greek govern-
pectations of a reward to be received in the future ment did not recognize the demotic form of the lan-
for actions performed in the present. This meta- guage until 1917, and only then was it taught in
phorical meaning of Ithaka is clear not only from schools.
the context in which the word is used but also be-
cause the last line refers to Ithaka not in the sin- Cavafy aligned himself for the most part with
gular but in plural, “Ithakas.” the movement for demotic Greek, which is the lan-
guage used in “Ithaka.” He was a contributor to the
Repetition magazine of a youth group called Nea Zoe (New
Life), which existed to promote demotic Greek lit-
Apart from this overarching use of the journey erature. Cavafy’s poetry appeared in Nea Zoe for a
as a metaphor for human life, Cavafy uses little fig- decade. However, Cavafy also valued the purist, or
urative language. The language has a conversa- classical form of the language, which was part of
tional flavor, and the poem employs the rhythms his family and class heritage.
of natural speech. Cavafy’s main rhetorical device
in the poem is repetition. In the first stanza, the poet Alexandria
repeats the names of the characters from the
Odyssey—Laistrygonians, Cyclops, and Posei- Alexandria is a cosmopolitan city with a
don—in order to emphasize how they may be long history. Not only is it the city where Cavafy
avoided. The repetition of “as long as” in lines 7 wrote “Ithaka,” it is probably one of the unnamed
Volume 19 117
Ithaka
Compare
&
Contrast
• Ancient Times: A thousand years before • Ancient Times: Civilization exists on Ithaca in
Alexandria is founded, a small Egyptian town 2700 B.C., as shown by pottery fragments. This
called Rhakotis exists at the same site. Alexan- is fifteen hundred years before Odysseus is said
der the Great founds Alexandria in 331 B.C. to have ruled the kingdom. The kingdom of
Odysseus probably includes the neighboring is-
Cavafy’s Lifetime: In the nineteenth century, land of Kefalonia as well as Ithaca.
Alexandria grows in size, wealth, and impor-
tance as a port city. But, in 1882, the British Cavafy’s Lifetime: In 1864, Ithaca finally
fleet bombards it. This marks the beginning of breaks free of British rule and unites with Greece.
British dominance in Egypt, which lasts well This initiates a period, lasting up to the 1930s, in
into the twentieth century. which the island is systematically excavated. In
1930, a female mask of clay with Odysseus’s
Today: Alexandria is the second largest city and name engraved on it is found in Louizos cave in
the main port of Egypt. It has a population of Polis. In another excavation, at the Aetos area,
four million and is the most ethnically and cul- archeologists find ruins of ancient temples, every-
turally diverse of the Egyptian cities. day articles and objects of worship from the ninth,
eighth, and seventh centuries B.C. Many differ-
• Ancient Times: Homer and the later poets and ent types of coins from the fourth and third cen-
dramatists of ancient Greece become the foun- turies B.C. are also found, some of which refer
dation of the Western literary tradition. to Odysseus as well as to various gods.
Cavafy’s Lifetime: Contemporary Greek liter- Today: Ithaca has a population of only two thou-
ature is little known outside the borders of sand people, but it offers the tourist familiar with
Greece. the Odyssey many attractions, including the bay of
Dexia (Homer’s harbor of Phorkys, where the
Today: Cavafy enjoys a worldwide reputation Phaecians left the sleeping Odysseus on the beach);
as one of Greece’s finest poets. The Greek nov- a ruined site known locally as Odysseus’s Castle,
elist Nikos Kazantzakis also has an international and the Plateau of Marathia, where Odysseus’s
reputation, and two Greek poets, George Seferis loyal servant Eumaeus kept his swine. A statue
and Odysseus Elytis, are winners of the Nobel of Odysseus stands in the village of Stavros.
Prize in literature.
Egyptian cities referred to in the poem as a seat of wrote a poem, “The Glory of the Ptolemies,” in
learning in ancient times. praise of that period in the history of the city.
Alexandria did not exist in the time of Odys- In Cavafy’s lifetime, Alexandria had largely
seus or Homer (who wrote about events several lost the glories of its past. After it was bombarded
centuries in the past). It was built in 331 B.C., on by the British in 1882, it fell primarily under British
the orders of Alexander the Great. After Alexander control. The Greek community there was in de-
died, the Ptolemies ruled Egypt for several gener- cline, although E. M. Forster, the English novelist
ations, and this was a glorious period in the history who lived in Alexandria during World War I (he
of the city. It was known for its architecture and as was also a friend of Cavafy), was still able to write
a center for natural sciences, mathematics, and lit- in his Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922)
erary scholarship. In 250 B.C., the state-supported that whatever elements of modern culture could be
library contained four hundred thousand volumes, found in Alexandria were due to its Greek com-
the largest collection in the ancient world. Cavafy munity.
118 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
Critical Overview Odysseus encounters Sirens on his journey home
to Ithaka
“Ithaka” has long been recognized as one of
Cavafy’s finest poems, and one that expresses his Criticism
outlook on life. It was first admired by T. S. Eliot,
who published the first translation of “Ithaka” into Bryan Aubrey
English in his literary periodical Criterion in 1924.
Since then, almost every writer on Cavafy has had Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has pub-
something to say about the poem, which has ap- lished many articles on twentieth century literature.
peared in at least four different English translations, In this essay, Aubrey discusses the range of possi-
each of which contains subtle differences. ble meanings implied by the term Ithaka and com-
pares the poem to Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and W. H.
Jane Lagoudis Pinchin, in Alexandria Still, Auden’s “Atlantis.”
evaluates the different translations of the poem, in-
cluding the first published translation, by George It is often said that human beings live mostly
Valassopoulo, and the translations by Rae Dalven in the past or in the future, but never the present.
and John Mavrogordato. Pinchin prefers Mavro- As individuals, humans spend much of their avail-
gordato’s version of the last line of the poem (“You able mental energy analyzing, dissecting, and of-
will have understood the meaning of an Ithaka”) to ten regretting the past, or planning, dreaming about,
Dalven’s version (“You must surely have under- and often fearing the future. An observer from outer
stood by then what Ithacas mean”). Pinchin com- space, were such a being privy to the workings of
ments, “Dalven does sound a bit impatient with her the human mind, might be baffled as to why these
dim voyager.” denizens of planet Earth exert themselves and at-
tempt to work their will upon events that do not in
Edmund Keeley, in Cavafy’s Alexandria: fact exist, since the past has vanished into nothing
Study of a Myth in Progress, points out that Cav- and the future is only an idea in a myriad of sepa-
afy “turn[s] the myths of history around to show rate individual minds.
us what may lie behind the facade most familiar
to us.” Well aware of this tendency, the narrator of
“Ithaka” attempts to persuade Odysseus, or any
C. M. Bowra comments briefly that the modern voyager on the sea of life, to abandon the
poem is “a lesson on all long searches.” He
also notes that in this and certain other poems of
Cavafy, the “instructive, moral note is never quite
absent . . . and gives them a certain stiffness and
formality.”
Peter Bien argues that the theme of “Ithaka,”
that the process is more important than the goal,
sounds affirmative but is in fact a tragic view of
life. He states, “Though affirmative in spirit, it is
at the same time rigorously pessimistic, for it de-
nies as illusory all the comforts invented by man:
eternity, order, decorum, absolute good, morality,
justice.”
For C. Capri-Karka, in Love and the Symbolic
Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis,
the poem “presents sensual pleasure as the center
of man’s existence.” Using passages from other
poems by Cavafy, Capri-Karka suggests that the
precious stones and other fine things that the poet
urges the voyager to collect are symbolic of erotic
pleasure.
“Ithaka” has resonated with readers and schol-
ars for generations. It was read aloud at the funeral
of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994.
Volume 19 119
Ithaka
The tone not only of This is not a worldview that has much time for
‘Ithaka’ but of many other religion either. If there is nothing of value other than
Cavafy poems suggests not the immediate sensual experience, then it would
seem that the kind of moral code that religions pre-
the ecstasy of such scribe is not applicable. Equally unnecessary would
moments but an awareness be the variety of religious beliefs in an afterlife, since
that they must always pass an afterlife would surely qualify as another Ithaka—
something longed for at the end of a journey.
and live on only in the
memory.” The idea for expressing such thoughts by
means of the Odyssey might have been suggested
mirage of living in the future. He seeks to persuade to Cavafy by a passage in Dante’s Divine Comedy
him of the richness of the present moment, the or by the poem “Ulysses,” by Victorian English
“now” of immediate sensual experience. Every- poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In Canto XXVI of
thing else is likely to disappoint and is in a sense Dante’s Hell (Book I of the Divine Comedy), Dante
unreal, a mere mental construct not grounded in depicts Ulysses (Odysseus) as being restless and
true experience. dissatisfied after his return to Ithaka. Domesticity
does not satisfy him, so he rounds up his old com-
Yet, “Ithaka” does not strike the reader as a joy- rades and sets sail for one more round of explo-
ful poem. In spite of its approving nods to the mar- ration and adventure. After seeing many more
vels to be found in the Phoenician trading port and wonders, his ship finally goes down in a storm, and
to the pleasure to be gained from the moment the he is drowned. Dante places Ulysses in Hell be-
voyager enters a harbor he has never seen before, it cause he advised others to practice trickery and
seems tinged with melancholy and world-weariness. fraud. He was, after all, known in the Odyssey as
In the narrator’s tone, there is something of the wist- the crafty Odysseus, and it was he who devised the
fulness, the regretful wisdom of the old that looks stratagem of the Trojan Horse and also advised the
back on pleasures lost or not taken and now forever Greeks to steal the sacred statue of Palladium on
beyond reach. One can almost hear the narrator say- which the safety of Troy depended.
ing he wished he had valued more highly that “rare
excitement,” those precious stones, those sensual Tennyson took up this theme of the eternal ex-
perfumes, when he himself was young. plorer in “Ulysses,” which was one of two poems
he wrote based on the Odyssey. (The other was
What are “these Ithakas” of which the narra- “The Lotos–Eaters.”) Tennyson’s Ulysses, like
tor holds such a low opinion? The more the term Dante’s, has discovered to his cost what the narra-
is pondered, the more it expands into multiple lev- tor of Cavafy’s “Ithaka” urged: the journey is al-
els of meaning. For the narrator, Ithakas would ways much more rewarding than the destination:
seem to be all the things that people invent to post-
pone real living, defined as being in the sensual It little profits that an idle king,
moment, looking neither forward nor backward. All By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Utopias or paradises that people dream of attaining Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
or building are types of Ithakas. Ithakas too are Unequal laws unto a savage race,
philosophies that build metaphysical systems about That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
the origins and goals and higher purposes of hu-
man life. They are, one suspects the narrator would The reality of Ulysses’ life back home in
say, mere stories, clever inventions, that take men Ithaka seems hardly worth the many years of voy-
and women away from the real stuff of life, the im- aging that it took him to get there. “She [Ithaka]
mediate experience of being alive in the flesh, now, has nothing left to give you now,” said the narra-
sensitive to beauty, with five senses receiving in tor of “Ithaka,” and here is the proof. Ulysses is fed
every moment the fullness that life has to offer. up. He is an adventurer by nature, and he cannot
sit still in peace and contentment for long. The jour-
neying is all.
The parallel with “Ithaka” is a close one, but
there is a difference. In Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses
is motivated by a desire for knowledge rather than
sensual experience. He desires “To follow knowl-
edge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound
of human thought.” Although Cavafy’s narrator
does indeed value the store of learning to be found
120 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
amongst the scholars in Egyptian cities, the em- must always pass and live on only in the memory.
phasis in the poem is more on sensual enjoyment It is this that gives many of Cavafy’s poems a touch
than intellectual endeavor. This is not so prominent of melancholy, of yearning for what once was or
in Tennyson’s poem, although one can imagine the might have been: “My life’s joy and incense: recol-
narrator of “Ithaka” applauding the declaration lection of those hours / when I found and captured
Tennyson gives to his ancient mariner: “I will drink pleasure as I wanted it” (“To Sensual Pleasure”).
/ Life to the lees.” This shows that, as the wise old
narrator of “Ithaka” promised, he has understood This “incense” is the equivalent of the “sen-
the meaning of all Ithakas. The voyage is the thing. sual perfume” of “Ithaka.” It does not stay. Ithaka
Destinations disappoint. beckons, although Ithaka has nothing to offer that
can match it.
If Tennyson may have been an influence on
Cavafy’s poem, Cavafy’s “Ithaka” has in its turn Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on “Ithaka,” in Po-
worked its influence on another twentieth century etry for Students, Gale, 2003.
poet who admired his work, W. H. Auden. Auden’s
poem “Atlantis” follows the same idea as “Ithaka,” Roderick Beaton
although the destination is not Odysseus’s island
but the mythical lost civilization of Atlantis. Au- In the following essay, Beaton discusses the
den adopts the same form Cavafy used for “Ithaka,” treatment and effect of time in Cavafy’s poems.
employing a narrator to directly address the trav-
eler in the second person, offering advice and in- Solemnly asked his opinion of his own work,
struction. Edmund Keeley, in his book Cavafy’s C. P. Cavafy towards the end of his life is said to
Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress defines have replied, ‘Cavafy in my opinion is an ultra-mod-
this form, which Cavafy used several times in his ern poet, a poet of future generations.’ History has
poems of this period, as “didactic monologue.” proved him right, but the tone of the reply also re-
veals an important ingredient of the unique poetic
Like Cavafy’s advice about Egyptian scholars, voice that is Cavafy’s: a gentle mockery of all pre-
Auden’s narrator advises his ancient traveler to tension, even that of the poet interviewed about his
consult the “witty scholars” if storms drive him own work, and a light-hearted concealment of his
ashore in Ionia. (He offers no tips, however, on how true self at the very moment when he appears about
to avoid stirring up the anger of Poseidon.) More to lay his cards on the table. ‘Cavafy,’ he says, not
relevant is the third stanza of Auden’s poem, which ‘I,’ as if ‘Cavafy’ were someone different.
advises the traveler what he should do if he is
forced ashore at Thrace. This region east of Mace- Cavafy’s poetry is distinguished by many sub-
donia was home of the worshipers of Dionysus, the tle forms of irony, and also by an intriguing self-
god of wine and ecstasy: effacement in poems that purport to tell of personal
experience and feeling. The subject matter of his
If, later, you run aground poems is equally unusual. Approximately half of
Among the headlands of Thrace what that he published in his lifetime (consisting
Where with torches all night long of 154 fairly short poems) and a similar proportion
A naked barbaric race of those published posthumously, are devoted to
Leaps frenziedly to the sound subjects taken from Greek history, chiefly between
Of conch and dissonant gong; 340 BC and AD 1453, while the remainder deal more
On that stony savage shore or less explicitly with homosexual encounters
Strip off your clothes and dance, for against a backdrop of contemporary Alexandria.
Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely Cavafy’s uniqueness has posed a problem for
About Atlantis, you will critics, for whom he continues to exercise a pro-
Never finish your journey. found fascination. To many his erotic poetry is a
disreputable appendage to more ‘sublime’ poetry
Here is the “rare excitement,” the sensual en- dedicated to the Greek past, but Cavafy’s uncom-
joyment, that Cavafy’s narrator advises his Odysseus promisingly ‘historical’ treatment of that past has
to seek, in which thoughts of the destination are also disconcerted many. And those critics who have
swallowed up in the immediacy of the moment. One not chosen to ignore the erotic poems have been
can almost see the narrator of “Ithaka” smiling his hard put to identify the source of powerful emo-
approval. And yet it would probably be a wry smile, tion, felt by many readers, in response to poems
tinged with regret. The tone not only of “Ithaka” but from which all reference to love is lacking, and the
of many other Cavafy poems suggests not the ec- sordidness and triviality of the sexual encounters
stasy of such moments but an awareness that they evoked are freely confessed.
Volume 19 121
Ithaka
Time takes away and “Ithaca” is considered not only central for the
alienates all real experience, theme of the journey but also the “brain” of Cavafy’s
whole work—if one can extend here the symbolism
but through art the poet used by Stuart Gilbert for the ninth episode, of James
can sometimes regain it in Joyce’s Ulysses. It is for this reason that Cavafy is
referred to by many critics as “the poet of ‘Ithaca.’”
the creation of a poem, The poem works on two levels: on the most imme-
though what is regained is diate, Cavafy emphasizes sensual pleasure and cel-
both more and less than the ebrates the journey from harbor to harbor; on the
more general level, one can see the poem as a con-
original.” densed expression of Cavafy’s view of the world.
To use Rex Warner’s words for it, “what is empha-
The common denominator between Cavafy’s sized in ‘Ithaca’ is the immense value of individual
two principal preoccupations, the distant Greek experience rather than the strained pursuit of an ideal
past and contemporary homosexual experiences, is or the heights and depths of cataclysmic events.”
time, which plays a major role in both types of
poem. Often it appears that the true subject of the “Ithaca,” published in 1911, marks a turning
erotic poems is not the experience described so point in Cavafy’s poetic development, as pointed
much as its loss to the passage of time. Time takes out by I. A. Sareyannis, G. Seferis and G. Savidis.
away and alienates all real experience, but through The poet himself drew a line separating his work
art the poet can sometimes regain it in the creation “before 1911” from the rest. The publication of
of a poem, though what is regained is both more “Ithaca” coincides with Cavafy’s decision to start
and less than the original. More, because, as the speaking more freely about himself. Actually, as
poet frankly says in several of these poems, he is we know from the poet’s personal notes, published
free to touch up reality in the imaginative act of only recently, Cavafy had come to terms with his
writing; less, because, no matter how ‘perfect’ an homosexuality, or had been “liberated,” as he put
experience can become thus imaginatively recre- it, as early as 1902, but recognizing the power of
ated, it is only imaginary, the real thing remaining prejudice he did not dare to reveal the truth until
lost to the past. This sense of ‘lost to the past’ is much later; and when he did, it was a very gradual
central, too, to Cavafy’s historical poems, in which process. Poems unequivocally identifying his erotic
he juxtaposes vivid pictures of flesh-and-blood, fal- preferences appeared only after 1918. Several of
lible human beings with a chillingly historical sense the poems written before 1910 were not published
of how remote they are, and how futile are these until many years later and some were not published
people’s preoccupations now. at all during the poet’s lifetime.
In their treatment of time, all Cavafy’s poems Of the poems that he did publish before 1910
can be said to belong to this third type, into which very few can be considered erotic, and they are
he once said his work could be divided, namely usually symbolic or deal with abstractions (“Long-
‘philosophical’ poetry. ings,” “Voices”). Another group of poems pub-
lished during this period is related to the symbolic
Source: Roderick Beaton, “Cavafy, C. P.,” in Reference journey in the sense that they express an unfulfilled
Guide to World Literature, 2d ed., edited by Lesley Hen- desire for escape and a journey. They are cryptic
derson, St. James Press, 1995, pp. 249–50. and symbolic; the predominant mood is one of fear,
frustration and despair, but it is hidden under a re-
C. Capri-Karka strained tone and a laconic style that translations
cannot fully convey. They deal with various forms
In the following introduction to her disserta- of imprisonment, frustrated hopes for escape and
tion, Capri-Karka discusses “Ithaca” as a turning liberation, external and internal conflicts, etc. In the
point in Cavafy’s work, one where the poet began “Walls,” the protagonist finds himself imprisoned
to be more open about his personal life—specifi- with no chance of escape. In the “Trojans” and
cally, his homosexuality. “The Windows” there is some hope of liberation,
but it does not last long. In these poems, Cavafy
presents man cut off from the world, alienated and
isolated by walls, besieged like the Trojans, fear-
ing invasion from outside as a constant threat, and
with only one desperate thought: escape.
122 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
This desire for an escape, a journey to another The poem works on
place and a new beginning is expressed in the first two levels: on the most
stanza of “The City,” but in the second the journey immediate, Cavafy
turns into a nightmare as the persona realizes that emphasizes sensual pleasure
the city, like the Furies, would pursue him wher- and celebrates the journey
ever he goes. from harbor to harbor; on
the more general level, one
A comparison of these poems, published be- can see the poem as a
fore 1910, to those also written during the same pe- condensed expression of
riod but published much later or not published by Cavafy’s view of the
the poet at all reveals the agonizing process of grad- world.”
ual liberation that Cavafy had to go through before
he could set out on his journey to Ithaca. later poetry. This does not mean of course that these
poems do not represent significant steps toward lib-
The date for Cavafy’s personal or private lib- eration, as Cavafy became more and more explicit
eration is set, as already mentioned, at 1902, on the about his erotic tendencies. A number of poems
basis of a note written in 1902 by the poet saying written mostly before 1902 and dealing with his-
“I have been liberated.” However, an examination torical or esthetic subjects contain some carefully
of his poems suggests that this is an arbitrary date worded hints about the poet’s sexual preferences.
and that his change in attitude, both private and For instance, within the context of esthetic ab-
public, was very gradual and extended over a pe- stractions are included expressions of admiration
riod of several years. for Greek gods or heroes considered as prototypes
of male beauty. One can mention in this group “Be-
One may actually wonder why Cavafy, who fore the State of Endymion,” “One of their Gods,”
according to his biographers was a homosexual “Sculptor of Tyana,” “The Glory of the Ptolemies,”
from a very early age, was “liberated” only at the “Ionic,” and “Orophernes,” all published in the pe-
age of forty. The answer must be found in his back- riod between 1911 and 1918.
ground, which was classical Greek and Christian.
The poet once said that he never had any meta- Much more explicit and very significant for the
physical tendencies, but, as his biographer R. evaluation of the way in which Cavafy really felt at
Liddell remarks, Cavafy “was not enough of a that time are some of the poems written during the
materialist to be without fear of the unknown.” same period but never released for publication by
Growing up and living in a family and a society the poet during his lifetime. In “Strengthening the
that functions within certain laws and convictions Spirit,” for instance, we find the first expression of
results in a conditioning of the individual that can- the idea on which “Ithaca” was built, that “pleasures
not be easily dismissed. One can logically reach a will have much to teach” man and that “law and
decision, but erasing from the subconscious the ac- custom” must be violated. In “Hidden Things,” on
cumulated fears, guilt and insecurity is a very slow the other hand, he describes his predicament of this
and painful process, especially when it takes place period, the fact that he cannot “act freely” and that
under the constant persecution of a society not his writings are “veiled.” The unpublished poem
ready to accept the change. It is true that Cavafy “On the Stairs” (1904) is an example of his fears,
grew up in Alexandria, where the mixture of races, his hesitations and frustrations. Although he did
nationalities and religions created a certain neu- have affairs at that time, he could not get rid of his
trality, but the moral principles of his immediate anxiety and his feeling of persecution. In a less
environment were more restrictive. Had he lived in
Greece, he would probably never have been liber-
ated. The anguish involved in this process cannot
be conceived by modern generations which have
grown up in a more permissive society where the
old values have lost much of their meaning.
One can find many indications of the fact that
Cavafy still carried his subconscious burden of
guilt in poems written long after 1902 and pub-
lished after 1911 or not published at all, such as
“He Swears” (written in 1905 and published in
1915). These indications gradually disappear in his
Volume 19 123
Ithaka
oppressive society the encounter would probably its more uninhibited way of life. The adventurous
have led to an adventure; instead it led to a poem, wandering from harbor to harbor is emphasized or
and even that he did not dare publish. Later in his implied in poems like “Passing Through” (1914),
life he did write and publish poems about encoun- “Body, Remember. . . .” (1916) and “Gray” (1917).
ters between strangers that did result in affairs In “Passing Through” the protagonist abandons
(“The Window of the Tobacco Shop,” “He Asked himself to a life of pleasure, his body overcome by
about the Quality”). “forbidden erotic ecstasy.” Also in “Body, Re-
member,” the protagonist’s, indulgence in past
Written in 1905–1908 were also a few ex- pleasure is nothing else but a happy recollection or
quisite erotic poems which leave no doubt about his journey from harbor to harbor. And the poem
“the form of [sensual pleasure]” but which were “Gray” contains the justification of his preference
written in an elevated style without explicit details for many harbors.
and were published in 1912–1917. Included in this
group are the poems “I Went,” “One Night,” “Days Some of the above poems, as well as a few
of 1903” and “Come Back.” others written during the same decade, are journeys
to the past. In this period, Cavafy is not an old
With the publication of “Ithaca” in 1911 man who recollects his distant past and for whom
Cavafy established the theoretical framework into memory is a therapy. The poet vividly recalls happy
which one can fit all of these previous poems as moments even of a recent past, as for instance
well as those that follow. He declared that the fi- in “To Sensual Pleasure” (1913), where he feels
nal destination of the journey is not important; what the need to celebrate the journey and the fulfilment
is important is sensual pleasure, that the journey as he departs from a harbor. After “Walls” and
should be full of joy, adventure and sensual de- the claustrophobic feeling and imprisonment of
lights. The poem’s symbolism covers a much wider his early period, it is natural for him to write
area than that of the journey. It implies that there poems like “Body, Remember” and “To Sensual
is no goal in life, that personal experience is more Pleasure” in order to reaffirm an uninhibited
important and that life is its own justification. eroticism. It is this kind of affirmation that he de-
scribes in the poem “Outside the House” (1917),
In the decade that followed “Ithaca,” Cavafy in which the view of an old building brings back
wrote many of his most affirmative erotic poems. joy and sensuous memories—the spell of love
He had overcome his inhibitions and was at peace transforms the house and its environment into a
with himself; and although his difficulties with so- magic place.
ciety were not entirely over, he expressed himself
more freely. His life and his poetry during this pe- Very characteristic of Cavafy is his preference
riod seem to be more or less an application of the for transient affairs. As W. H. Auden writes, “The
principles spelled out in “Ithaca.” He was travel- erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and
ing “from harbor to harbor” enjoying with “rare ex- short-lived affairs,” but the poet refuses to pretend
citement” the sensual pleasures of the journey and that he feels unhappy or guilty about it. Rex
transforming them into art. The predominant mood Warner, stressing the poet’s realism and acceptance
in these poems is one of fulfilment and glorifica- of life, notes that “if we are to take the poet’s own
tion of the senses. word for it, love affairs of a disreputable character
were a source of immense inspiration.” Other crit-
This decade starts with “I’ve Looked So ics, like George Seferis and Edmund Keeley, ex-
Much. . . .” (1911), in which he tells us that his vi- press a different point of view. Seferis sees in
sion overflows with beauty, and continues with Cavafy’s poetry an “unresurrected Adonis,” and
“Ithaca,” expressing the euphoria of the adventure. Keeley writes that sterility, frustration and loss are
Even the symbolic poem “The God Abandons the prevailing attributes of actual experience in
Antony” (1910), which represents the end of the Cavafy’s contemporary city. They both see him
journey, is the summing up of a life rich with happy “condemned” to such ephemeral affairs. In my
experiences. The symbolic departure from a harbor view, however, sterility for Cavafy is irrelevant,
in “In the Street” (1913) is also represented as a and transience means renewal. He believed that
strong intoxication with pleasure. Another depar- prolongation of a love affair would result in dete-
ture is presented in “Returning [Home] from rioration. This becomes clear in poems such as “Be-
Greece” (1914), in which the literal departure is at fore Time Altered Them,” “Gray,” etc. Peter Bien,
the same time a symbolic one, as the protagonist discussing in the context of “Ithaca” Cavafy’s be-
abandons the principles that Greece represents lief in the value of individual experience, observes
(classical restraint) and sails toward Alexandria and
124 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
that the acceptance of life as its own justification ceptional beauty, while he identifies with Caesar-
on the one hand “constituted Cavafy’s own free- ion, who was one of the persecuted of history. In
dom and enabled him to be strangely animated and the “Glory of the Ptolemies” the first thing the king
‘yea-saying,’” and on the other it meant denying asserts of himself is that he is “a complete master
“as illusory all the comforts invented by man: eter- of the art of pleasure.” In “Favor of Alexander
nity, order, decorum, absolute good, morality, jus- Balas” the protagonist boasts about the fact that he
tice.” He concludes that this outlook, though is the favorite of the Syrian king and shows an ex-
“affirmative in spirit . . . is at the same time rigor- cessive arrogance by declaring that he dominates
ously pessimistic.” It is true that Cavafy belonged all Antioch.
to a generation which grew up with these values,
and in my view the process of his liberation was Sometimes, however, his voyage back to his-
for this reason a gradual and painful struggle. He tory is an ingenious device for speaking about ho-
was tormented by remorse, dilemmas and conflicts. mosexual love in a dignified manner by using an
Once “liberated,” however, he can no longer be objective correlative from history. This is particu-
considered a pessimist. He was not an idealist who larly tree about his several epitaphs (“Tomb of Ig-
was deprived of the comfort offered by the old val- natios,” “Tomb of Lanis,” “In the Month of Athyr,”
ues. Order, decorum, morality were not really com- etc.). A young man’s epitaph is a dignified portrait,
forts for him but rather the source of his oppression far back in the distance of time. The austerity of
and isolation, and denying them must have been the form and the archaic language that Cavafy uses
accompanied by a kind of relief. This view is based add to this effect.
on the poet’s previously unpublished work, which
appeared only recently, and more particularly on During this decade, Cavafy was not unaware
the poem “Hidden Things,” in which he envisions of the possible dangers and complications of unin-
a “more perfect society.” hibited hedonism. But these complications appear
only in very few poems of this period and mostly
On the subject of pessimism I would say: Cavafy has after 1917 (“Tomb of Iasis,” “The Twenty-fifth
before him a reality which he sees and expresses in Year of his Life”).
the most [dry] manner. This reality (of memory, of
old age, of lost pleasure, of deceit), whether raw, dry, In the decade 1920–1930 the complications
or whatever, cannot be called pessimistic. and unpleasant situations increased as Cavafy was
growing older. Art was therapy for him, a redeemer
According to G. Lechonitis, Cavafy himself has de- of time; he continued his voyages to the past evok-
nied that his poems were pessimistic. ing intoxicating memories. Since the fleeting mo-
ment was the essence of his life, he wanted to make
A large number of poems of this period can be it immortal through his art.
characterized as “journeys to the past” in which
Cavafy travels back in time “mixing memory and In this last decade and until his death, Cavafy
desire,” in Eliot’s phrase. The attitude is again for wrote an increasing number of sad poems describ-
the most part positive, as the poet recollects happy ing sometimes in realistic detail unpleasant or
memories: as in “Body, Remember,” “Long Ago,” painful situations. The journey from harbor to har-
etc. Sometimes the poet travels back not to his own bor in the poems “In Despair” (1923), “In the Tav-
past but through history to recreate portraits of his- ernas” (1926) and “Days of 1896” (1925) takes a
torical or pseudohistorical figures. His historical different, unpleasant turn. In the first two of these
poems are for the most part objective and realistic poems the journey is not a beautiful adventure but
and are set predominantly in the Hellenistic period rather an effort at adjustment after a sentimental
because, as he explained himself, this period “is setback. In the third, “Days of 1896,” after the so-
more immoral, more free, and permits me to move cial degradation of the protagonist and the loss of
my characters as I want.” His purpose often is to his job, his wandering from harbor to harbor is
uncover human motives, which he does with irony more of a drifting than a delightful voyage.
and political cynicism.
Some of the poems of this period are journeys
Of the several historical poems that Cavafy has to the past and have a more or less therapeutic pur-
written, of special interest to this study are those in pose for the aging poet, like “To Call up the
which the poet weaves “homosexual suggestions Shades” (1920), “I Brought to Art” (1921)—where
into the historical context.” In poems such as “Oro- art plays a complementary role in life—or “On the
phernes” or “Caesarion,” he selects as his subjects Ship” (1919), in which the poet travels back to
minor historical figures who appeal to him. What the past to revive the memory of a young man as
fascinates him with Orophernes is the youth’s ex- he looks at a pencil portrait.
Volume 19 125
Ithaka
What “In an Old Book” (1922), where the poet, looking
Do I Read at a watercolor portrait, imagines that the youth in
the picture is destined only for homosexual love.
Next?
In most of the sad poems of this period there
• Homer’s Odyssey is considered by many to be is an acceptance and even some possible consola-
the first great adventure story in Western liter- tion. The memory of the lost lover “saves” the
ature, and its influence on poets and writers protagonist of “In the Tavernas,” while in “In De-
throughout the centuries cannot be overesti- spair” the abandoned lover seeks new experiences,
mated. Although there are many translations trying to recapture the old sensation. Only in very
of the epic, the version by Robert Fitzgerald, few poems does despair reach what one might call
first published in 1961, has been highly ac- “the ‘Waste Land’ feeling” because, in contrast to
claimed. earlier poems, there is a serious emotional in-
volvement. The situations that led to this feeling
• If Cavafy is modern Greece’s best known poet include prematurely terminated affairs (“Kleitos’
in the English-speaking world, Nikos Kazantza- Illness,” 1926), one-sided love (“A Young Poet in
kis is its best known novelist. His Zorba the his Twenty-fourth Year,” 1928) and the death of
Greek (1952) is the story of a Greek workman a lover (“Myris: Alexandria, A.D. 340,” 1929;
who accompanies the narrator, a young writer, “Lovely White Flowers,” 1929).
to a mine on Crete and becomes his best friend
and inspiration. Zorba is considered by many to Cavafy admits in his poetry the dangers of
be one of the great characters of twentieth cen- excess, but since he places sensual pleasure at the
tury fiction. center of existence he defies the consequences. Al-
though in some epitaphs and other poems he im-
• Voices of Modern Greece (1982), edited by Ed- plies that excess kills, in his “Longings” he twists
mund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, is an anthol- the subject the other way around, suggesting indi-
ogy of major poets of modern Greece. The rectly that suppression of desire is also equivalent
editors selected poems that translate most suc- to death.
cessfully into English and are also representa-
tive of the best work of poets such as Cavafy, Even in this period in which, the sad poems
Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus predominate, however, Cavafy wrote some poems
Elytis, and Nikos Gatsos. of affirmation and fulfilment (“He Came to Read,”
1924; “Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old,”
• Modern Greek Poetry (1973), edited and trans- 1927).
lated by Kimon Friar, is a larger anthology than
that of Keeley and Sherrard and is indispensable The gradual change in attitude in Cavafy’s
for anyone wanting to understand the full range erotic poems—from imprisonment and attempts at
of modern Greek poetry. escape in the early period, through the affirmation
of the journey from harbor to harbor on the way to
Some other poems of this period are spiritual Ithaca, and to the complications of the journey in
journeys of a different kind in which the purpose the last decade—is summarized also in the words
of the poet is to emphasize his erotic preferences. and phrases that the poet uses in describing simi-
In “Picture of a 23-Year-Old Painted by his Friend lar situations. One example is the reference to a
of the Same Age, an Amateur” (1928), he assumes brothel as the “ill-famed house” in the unpublished
the role of a painter and after giving shape to a “On the Stairs” but as the “house of pleasure” in
handsome young man (“He’s managed to capture the 1915 poem “And I Lounged and Lay on their
perfectly / the sensual [tone] he wanted”) he lets Beds.” Also, the narrator in “The Photograph”
his mind wander to the “exquisite erotic pleasure” (1913) abhors the idea that the young man who was
this youth is made for. The same thing happens in photographed leads a “degrading, vulgar life,”
while in “Sophist Leaving Syria,” written in 1926,
he admires Mevis, “the best looking, the most
adored young man/in all Antioch,” because selling
his body he gets the highest price of all the young
men leading the same life.
In the poems before 1910 homosexual love is
not mentioned explicitly. Between 1919 and 1920
it is referred to as “illicit pleasure” (“In the Street;”
126 Poetry for Students
Ithaka
“Their Beginning,” 1915). But in the last decade, when complications of love were his themes, are
after 1920, its is described as an “exquisite erotic portraits of unique pathos and tenderness. For in-
pleasure” (“Picture of a 23-Year-Old Painted by his stance, “A Young Poet in his Twenty-fourth
Friend of the Same Age, An Amateur”; “Theatre Year,” although referring to an “abnormal form
of Sidon [A.D. 400],”1923). In the latter poem he of pleasure,” is a superb study of one-sided love.
explains further what kind of pleasure he has in Also, “Lovely White Flowers,” undeniably senti-
mind, using in an ironic tone the everyday vocab- mental, is an exquisite poem praised as one of
ulary on the subject: the “[exquisite erotic] plea- Cavafy’s best by Seferis, I.A. Sareyannis and
sure, / the kind that leads toward a condemned, a Robert Liddell.
barren love.” The same kind of ironic and almost
provocative tone is used in “In an Old Book,” The perfection of Cavafy’s art was a long,
where he says that the young man whose water- complex and tortuous process. This “fastidious poet
color portrait he is describing “was not destined for who handled words as if they were pearls” went
those / who love in ways that are more or less through many stages of severe self-editing in order
healthy” but was made for “beds / that common to find his unique tone. This straggle to perfect the
morality calls shameless.” form paralleled the agonizing process reflected in
the content of his poetry, as Cavafy was subject in
Finally, in “Days of 1896,” written in 1925, his personal life to endless fluctuations, dilemmas
which is a clear defense of homosexually, he al- and crises until he reached his complete liberation
most creates a new terminology in order to justify and adjustment.
the young protagonist after he has realistically
presented him as being déclassé and an outcast. Cavafy’s journey in Alexandria may have
He takes the word “pure,” which has Christian turned out to be more complicated than he had pre-
connotations, and gives it a different meaning: dicted in his “Ithaca,” but he dared to say the truth
the flesh is pure not when it is intact, immaculate, about human erotic experience with an unprece-
but only when ones does not betray it by resisting dented intensity.
his desires. Thus, he reverses the traditional moral
code by placing sensuality above honor and repu- Of the 153 poems collected for publication by
tation, instead of honor and reputation above Cavafy himself and the seventy-five that appeared
sensuality. recently, those dealing directly with the journey on
the literal level are not many but include some of
In contrast to his contemporary Greek poets, his most significant statements (“Ithaca,” “The God
who were predominantly romantic, Cavafy, fol- Abandons Antony,” “Returning [Home] from
lowing the opposite direction, developed a laconic, Greece”). The great majority of the other poems of
objective and almost antipoetic style. This is ac- Cavafy are indirectly related to the journey, as de-
knowledged by all of his critics. In his erotic fined in the first section, on the symbolic level only
poems, however, most critics trace an element by the fact that they are erotic.
of sentimentality. Timos Malanos finds his late
erotic poems inferior in their explicitness and As Cavafy grew older, he moved from a cryp-
sentimentality. Edmund Keeley and Kimon Friar tic or allegorical form of expression on this subject
also discuss this sentimentality; Friar writes that to a more open and frank one. On this basis it is
“occasionally . . . a surprising sentimentality in- convenient to divide his work into three periods:
trudes.” Peter Bien, referring to this excess of before 1910, 1910 to 1920, and 1920 to 1932. This
emotion, comments that most of the erotic poems chronological division will be followed in the dis-
“show remarkable control; and it would be entirely cussion of the poems related to the journey because
misleading to dwell on Cavafy’s occasional it permits a better insight into the poet’s changing
lapses.” Cavafy was a very severe editor of him- attitudes on the subject. The chronological order
self, destroying hundreds of poems every year. will be based on the date on which each poem was
In my view, his use of emotion was not acciden- written rather than that on which it was published,
tal. Since in all of his other poetry he appears as because it is more interesting to follow the poet’s
an enemy of sentimentality, he apparently thought own development rather than the change in the pub-
that an erotic poem should not be written in a lic image he chose to project, although the latter
dry style, and only in his love poems did he per- will also be discussed.
mit himself to be occasionally sentimental, when
he wanted to express an extremely strong feeling. Source: C. Capri-Karka, “Introduction,” in Love and the
Some of these poems, especially of the last decade, Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Se-
feris, Pella Publishing Company, 1982, pp. 19–28.
Volume 19 127
Ithaka
Sources Further Reading
Auden, W. H., Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden, Random Auden, W. H., “Introduction,” in The Complete Poems of Cav-
House, 1958, pp. 71–73. afy, translated by Rae Dalven, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.
Bien, Peter, Constantine Cavafy, Columbia University Auden acknowledges that Cavafy has been an influ-
Press, 1964. ence on his own writing and discusses the distinctive
tone of voice in Cavafy’s poems that makes his work
Bowra, C. M., “Constantine Cavafy and the Greek Past,” instantly recognizable.
in The Creative Experiment, Macmillan, 1949, pp. 29–60.
Forster, E. M., Two Cheers for Democracy, Penguin, 1965.
Capri-Karka, C., Love and the Symbolic Journey in the Forster was a personal friend of Cavafy and admired
Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis, Pella Publishing Com- his work. This book contains a very readable essay
pany, 1982. on Cavafy’s poetry and gives insight into the man as
well. (The essay was omitted from American editions
Cavafy, C. P., Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Kee- of this book.)
ley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, Prince-
ton University Press, 1980. Liddell, Robert, Cavafy: A Critical Biography, Duckworth,
1974.
—, The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae
Dalven, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. This is the only biography of Cavafy in English. It gives
a detailed and sympathetic account of his difficult life,
—, Poems of C. P. Cavafy, translated by John Mavro- discussing his relationships with his six brothers and
gordato, Chatto and Windus, 1951. demanding mother, his homosexuality, and the mun-
dane office job in which he worked for most of his life.
Forster, E. M., Alexandria: A History and a Guide, with an
introduction by Lawrence Durrell, Michael Haag, 1982. Ruehlen, Petroula Kephala, “Constantine Cavafy: A Euro-
pean Poet,” in Nine Essays in Modern Literature, edited by
Keeley, Edmund, Cavafy’s Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Donald E. Stanford, Louisiana State University Press, 1965,
Progress, Harvard University Press, 1976. pp. 36–62.
Pinchin, Jane Lagoudis, Alexandria Still: Forster, Durrell, Ruehlen argues that Cavafy should be considered a
and Cavafy, Princeton University Press, 1977. European poet, in the sense that he is culturally and
emotionally within the Western tradition. Ruehlen ar-
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, “Ulysses,” in The Norton Anthol- gues that the two criteria for calling a poet European
ogy of English Literature, 4th ed., Vol. 2, Norton, 1979, are maturity and comprehensiveness.
pp. 1110–11.
128 Poetry for Students
Once Again I Prove the
Theory of Relativity
Sandra Cisneros’s poem “Once Again I Prove the Sandra Cisneros
Theory of Relativity” is from her third book of po- 1994
etry, Loose Woman (1994). The poem is a cele-
bration of romantic love. The female speaker
imagines how excited and delighted she would be
if her lover were to return. She lets her mind and
heart contemplate all the things she would do for
him and how well she would treat him and relates
how beautiful he is. She says she would dote on
him and make sure she fully got to know him be-
fore he departed again, as she knows he would.
Cisneros is noted not only for her poems but
also for her novels and short stories. She typically
portrays strong, independent women of Mexican
American heritage, who refuse to conform to tradi-
tional male expectations of how women should be-
have and what their place in society should be. “Once
Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity” is not ex-
actly a typical Cisneros piece, since it does not em-
phasize the Chicano or feminist aspect of her work.
Instead, it is a heartfelt expression of the ideal of ro-
mantic love. It reveals the heightened perceptions
and intensity of sensual and emotional responses that
such love calls forth. It also expresses the realiza-
tion that in such intense experiences of love, whether
they last or not, lie the seeds of creativity and art.
Author Biography
Sandra Cisneros was born December 20, 1954, in
Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of a Mexican
129
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity
Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street won the American
Book Award from the Before Columbus Founda-
father and Mexican American mother. She was the tion. The novel was a popular success, selling more
only daughter in a family of seven. Because her fa- than two million copies over the next two decades.
ther missed his homeland, the family frequently
moved from Chicago to Mexico City and then back Having made her mark on the national literary
again, leaving Cisneros often feeling homeless. She scene, Cisneros published a book of poetry, My
developed a love of reading and, as early as the Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987), and a volume of
fifth grade, had plans to go to college. During child- short stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other
hood and adolescence, she also began writing po- Stories (1991). In 1988 she was awarded a second
ems and stories. fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Arts. Cisneros also taught as a visiting writer at var-
In 1976, Cisneros earned a bachelor of arts de- ious universities, including California State Uni-
gree from Loyola University of Chicago and then at- versity, Chico (1987–1988); the University of
tended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, California, Berkeley (1988); the University of Cal-
graduating in 1978 with a master of fine arts degree. ifornia, Irvine (1990); and the University of New
It was while studying in Iowa that Cisneros began Mexico, Albuquerque (1991).
writing about her experiences as a Latina woman liv-
ing outside mainstream American culture. In 1994, Cisneros wrote a bilingual juvenile
book, Hairs: Pelitos, illustrated by Terry Ybanez,
Cisneros taught at the Latino Youth Alterna- and the same year published her third collection of
tive High School in Chicago, and was a college re- poems, Loose Woman, which contains the poem
cruiter and counselor for minority students at “Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity.”
Loyola University, but her passion was for writing. Cisneros did not publish again until 2002, when her
In 1980, her first book of poems, Bad Boys, was second novel, Caramelo, appeared. Caramelo,
published. In 1982, she received a fellowship from which took Cisneros nine years to write, is a multi-
the National Endowment for the Arts. This en- generational saga and historical novel about Latino
dowment enabled her to continue working on The immigration to the United States.
House on Mango Street (1984), which took her five
years to complete. A collection of vignettes about Poem Summary
the coming-of-age of a Latina woman in Chicago,
Stanza 1
“Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity”
begins with the speaker imagining the return of
someone she obviously loves deeply. Addressing
the absent lover directly, she imagines how she
would act toward him if he returned. First, she
would treat him like a valuable work of art, such
as a piece by Matisse that had been considered lost.
Henri Matisse was a French painter and sculptor
who lived from 1869 to 1954. The speaker would
also honor her returning lover by seating him on a
couch like a pasha. A pasha was a Turkish title of
rank or honor, placed after a person’s name. The
speaker then says she would dance a Sevillana,
which is a dance from Seville, Spain that can be
performed by a single female dancer. She would
also leap around like a Taiwanese diva. Diva liter-
ally means goddess, and the term is often applied
to female vocal stars in pop and opera. Taiwan has
a number of young, female pop stars who are of-
ten called divas. They are known for their energetic
and athletic performances on stage.
130 Poetry for Students
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity
Next, the speaker says she would bang cym- Media
bals like in a Chinese opera. Chinese opera makes Adaptations
frequent use of percussion instruments. The persona
of the poem would also “roar like a Fellini sound- • Cisneros made an audio recording of Loose Wo-
track.” Federico Fellini (1920–1993) was an Italian man, issued in 1994 by Random House Audio.
film director, famous for innovative films such as
La strada, La dolce vita, and Otto e mezzo (8-1/2). The speaker then says she would laugh at the
Nino Rota wrote the music for Fellini’s films, which stories her returning lover told, though she could
contribute greatly to their impact. The two men had equally well be silent in his presence. She knows
a long collaboration, which ended only with Rota’s her lover is aware such an act of silence in his pres-
death in 1979. The poem’s speaker says she would ence is normally hard for her.
also laugh like the little dog in the nursery rhyme
that watched the cow jump over the moon. Stanza 6
Stanza 2 The speaker seems to have no illusions about
her lover. She knows when he grows tired of her
The speaker continues to address her absent or the place they live, he will leave. He could go
lover. If he were to return, she would be a clown anywhere, and she names places far away and near:
and tell funny stories. She would paint clouds on Patagonia, a region in Argentina and Chile; Cairo,
the walls of her home—an image that presumably Egypt; Istanbul, Turkey; Katmandu, the capital city
expresses her desire to show artistic creativity. She of Nepal; and finally Laredo, Texas, a town on the
would put the best linen on the bed for him and ob- United States-Mexico border with a large Mexican
serve him while he sleeps. During this time, she American population.
would hold her breath, which is a way of saying that
she would be very quiet so as not to awaken him. Projecting into the future, the speaker imag-
ines what she will gain by her lover’s return, even
Stanza 3 if he later departs again. She will have savored him
like a tasty food, memorized everything about him,
The speaker breaks off from addressing her and tasted his essence (“held you under my
loved one directly and, using a series of similes, tongue”). She will have learned him by heart. Here
muses on the beauty of her beloved. Her beloved is the poet plays on the usual meaning of the expres-
like the “color inside an ear” or “like a conch shell.” sion “learn by heart,” which means to learn by
A conch shell is a spiral, one-piece shell of certain memorizing. Since the poet has already mentioned
sea mollusks or any large shell used as a horn for memorizing, this phrase placed here means that the
calling. The third simile used to convey the beauty speaker learned all about her lover through her
of her beloved is a nude by Modigliani. Amedeo heart, through love.
Modigliani (1884–1920) was a French painter
known for his distinctive portraits and nudes. The speaker’s conclusion is that when her
loved one leaves, all her knowledge and love of
Stanza 4 him will yield their fruit in the poetry she will write.
He will become her muse.
In this stanza, the speaker returns to address-
ing her beloved. She declares that this time she will Themes
cut off some of his hair, so that even if he leaves
her again, some part of him will remain. This im- Romantic Love
age sparks a memory for the speaker of how soft
her lover’s hair is, the softest that can be imagined. The title of the poem, “Once Again I Prove the
Theory of Relativity” is meant humorously. It
Stanza 5
The speaker continues with another set of ac-
tions she would perform if the beloved returned.
She would present him with flowers and fruit, in-
cluding parrot tulips and papaya. Parrot tulips have
petals that are feathered, curled, twisted, or waved.
The flowers are large and brightly colored. The pa-
paya is a tropical tree that produces large yellow-
orange fruit, like a melon.
Volume 19 131
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity
Topics for than forward. The actual physics of this notion is
Further not important for the poem. Cisneros merely uses
Study the idea as a jumping-off point for her speaker to
imagine that, since time might run backwards, her
• The poem is an expression of romantic love. lost lover might return.
What is the nature of romantic love? What are
its characteristics? Is romantic love the supreme Using this premise, the poem explores the
kind of love, or are there other kinds of love that many ways in which love can be expressed, and
are equally valuable? the lover can appreciate the beloved. There is an
emphasis on the freedom love brings, as well as the
• Research the lives of three Chicano authors or feelings of exultation and lightness, of exhilaration,
other authors of color (African American, Asian and of the intensity of sensual experience. This kind
American, Native American, etc.). Based on of love animates a person and enlivens her physi-
your research and your own or your friends’ ex- cally. Love is exciting. It makes the persona of the
periences, detail some challenges faced by poem dance and leap with enthusiasm and do things
someone growing up with a dual cultural iden- she would not normally do. Love energizes.
tity. Provide examples of ways someone can be
an American and at the same time preserve one’s The love revealed by the poem is also a grand
original cultural heritage. sentiment, an expansive emotion. It stimulates in
the lover the flamboyant expression of her feelings,
• The poem suggests that creativity springs from and it can also enlarge her beyond her normal self
love remembered. What else inspires poets to and beyond her usual cultural boundaries. She can
write poems, or novelists to write novels? Read be a Spanish dancer or a Taiwanese diva, or she
several interviews with your favorite authors. can take part in a Chinese opera. Her voice can be
What state of mind does a person have to be in like the roar of music on a film soundtrack. When
to be creative? Provide examples from the in- she loves, she leaves her small, individual self be-
terviews, along with your own ideas. hind. She becomes universal.
• Compare “Once Again I Prove the Theory of Certain kinds of love, such as intensely felt ro-
Relativity” with another love poem of your mantic love, tend to worship and idealize the
choice. What are the similarities and differences beloved. Such is the case in this poem. The per-
between the two? Which poem is more effec- sona idealizes the beauty of her lover (“How beau-
tive at conveying its meaning? Why? tiful you are”). She is so enchanted by him that she
would be content simply to watch him sleep. She
refers to Albert Einstein’s special theory of rela- wants to cut off a lock of his hair so that part of
tivity, published in 1905, and his general theory of her beloved will always remain with her. She would
relativity, developed in 1915 and 1916. Using cal- do whatever he wanted. Her own needs would
culations based on the postulate of the uniform somehow slip into the background as she spent all
speed of light and the relativity of motion (the mo- her energy attending to him, honoring him, being
tion of something can be determined only by its re- the woman that she thinks he wants her to be. She
lation to something else), Einstein showed that time would not be angry when, tired of her attention, he
is measured differently for people moving relative left again. She honors his restless spirit and would
to one another. At speeds of light, time would slow accept his loss without rancor. At least she would
to near zero. have her memories.
In the popular mind, Einstein’s theory, which At the same time, there is a suggestion of un-
is too complex for most laymen to understand in reality about the way the persona speaks of her
detail, has given rise to the idea that under certain love. It may strike some readers as a flight of the
circumstances, time might flow backward rather imagination that is too exaggerated, too extreme,
and too fragile to survive the test of real experi-
ence. Such a view might note that behind the un-
abashed expression of devotion and love, this poem
has an untold story—that these two people had a
romantic relationship before, which did not, for un-
known reasons, endure and would not (as the
speaker recounts) endure again, even if the lover
were to return.
132 Poetry for Students
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