Peeling More Poems

Sunday, September 19, brought the debut of this year’s Eagle Pond Authors’ Series with “Peeling More Poems” hosted by poets Donald Hall, Charles Simic and Cynthia Huntington.The Series is named in honor of Hall, who lives at Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire, and also serves as the series’ artistic director. Hall has received abundant recognition, including five years as New Hampshire’s Poet Laureate and three separate nominations for the National Book Award. Hall’s newest work, a memoir titled The Best Day The Worst Day, will be published this spring. Charles Simic received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990, and has published more than sixty books. Currently he is teaching at the University of New Hampshire, as he has since 1973. Cynthia Huntington is New Hampshire’s current Poet Laureate. She is the recipient of several fellowships, and is a professor of English at Dartmouth College and the director of the Creative Writing Department. Each host chose one poem from an author who will be visiting PSU later this school year in the Eagle Ponds Authors’ Series. Although they made their selections independently of each other, the event had an elegiac theme. The first poem discussed was Hall’s Jack Gilbert selection, “Infidelity.” An emotive piece beginning in a lament for a deceased love, the poem carries the reader through his grief and his comforting memories. He recognizes the absence and also presence of his lover with lines such as, “Now he knows she is living inside him,/ as the winds is sometimes visible/ in the trees.” The poem closes with an admission that the grief is subsiding, and alludes to the title of the piece by expressing the fear of the lessening intensity of his grief. The next piece discussed by the panel of authors was Huntington’s pick, “A Display of Mackerel,” by Mark Doty. Doty intricately crafts metaphors for life, loss, and moving on through vivid imagery of an everyday supermarket still-life. As Huntington pointed out, in this work, “Doty is seeing himself as a member of the human tribe and not only a mourner.” She also noted that this poem argues that “individual loss is duplicatable.” The experience is part of human existence. This is shown in the poem by the description of glimmering mackerel displayed in the market as they were together in life. “How happy they seem,/ even on ice, to be together, selfless.” Hall observed that this poem discussed that although we insist upon our individuality, sometimes we must “look for another kind of existence for comfort”.The last poem covered on Sunday afternoon was Simic’s selection, “Late Morning,” by Marie Howe. In this piece, Howe paints a scene for the reader. She frames a memory depicting her grief for her deceased brother with a scene of everyday life that has continued after his death. In this poem, Howe is looking from one physical location to another and into another time.Simic expressed his attraction to this poem as being in part due to the painting-like quality of this piece. He then gracefully compared “Late Morning” to paintings by Vermeer, which display the technique of using light to set a scene. To further this analogy, the poem has several layers within the scene it depicts. The two characters in the poem see different scenes at the same moment. One drifts to memory and mourning, and is then brought back to the present; the other gazes out a window and we are reminded that life goes on even when loved ones die. While exploring these works, the poets gave insight on how to read poetry. All three of the poems stand as examples of imagery, one of the fundamental devices used by poets. After assessing the poems individually, the panel explained that each of the poems is able to stand as an example of different ways to use imagery. Howe creates a scene from everyday life that included personal interaction, the private sphere and also objects and light. Doty depicts a still-life, focusing on the small particulars. Gilbert shows a personal image that has been passed through consciousness to share his experience. The final topic discussed was the consideration of context when exploring a work of poetry. All three of these poems came from books by the authors. Thus, the poems preceding and following them in the collection give the reader background knowledge of the writer, and perhaps a theme of the book. The poems stand on their own powerfully, but when looking at the poems individually, the reader doesn’t have the influence of context to aid in their assessment. Marie Howe will be visiting PSU on October 17th at 3pm in Smith Recital Hall at the Silver Cultural Arts Center. Mark Doty will arrive on March 6th, and Jack Gilbert on April 10th.