Cezanne at Sixty-one, and: Close Reading, and: Abbaye de Sénanque, and: Almost Equinox, and: The Shore

Cezanne at Sixty-one

From restless sleep he woke to the same darkthat stained his dreams. He always knew a tintof midnight dominated the Lord's starkpalette. It was what gave a star's furtive glintthe jolt others saw as hope but he knewfor what it was: a trick air plays on light.Darkness was the cold, secret core of faithhe had lost long before reaching the ageof sixty-one. But he rose against night'shold, crossed the meager room. It was still truethat he loved to catch the onrushing seaas a burst of color felt in the conesand rods of his eyes. He still longed to bewhere dawn's flares fractured a mountain's bones.

Close Reading

for Thomas Kinsella

The sun sank behind us as we drove pastCrab Orchard Lake in my battered Falcon.It coughed and rattled at forty but we spokeabove the noise, three young poets eagerfor our evening's close reading with the master."Fern Hill" was about the lost childhood Eden! "Fern Hill" was about death! About time!All poems were about Death and Time!

In his formal dining room, Kinsella placedus at the table like poker players beneatha blazing chandelier. We spread the textand bent to our task. Then he asked whythe poem began with Now and broughtall pronouncements to a sudden stop.

Gerry sat in an oak rocker, dangling onelast ornament for his Christmas tree.Bob and I stood across the small room,ready with advice. The doorbell rang.Kinsella entered, gloved, hatted, stampingsnow from his boots, streaming vaporas he spoke, helping Eleanor removeher coat. We shook his hand and askedwhere he thought the ornament should go.He studied Gerry's tree, blinked at its blinkinglights, said things were perfect as they were:Anything more would just be for effect.

At forty-one he seemed correct and neatas a sonnet. The thick beard trimmed, hair flatacross his scalp, voice clear, words precise, feeton the floor like a couplet when he sat.But there was something radical goingon beneath the surface. Order opposedby sheer formlessness in new work growingstranger as he turned inward. I supposedhe would teach me how to write poems clean and tight as he used to write them, verse strictas he looked. That he would reveal to methe secret of where poems came from. Hewould show me the hidden ways to inflictform, and what being a poet might mean.

Instead, we practiced close reading.Who is speaking in the second stanza?We scoured excess, awkward statement,clotted imagery, extreme verbal gesture,slackness, the least readiness to settlefor the rhetorical. See here, a beecannot repeatedly sting. This is false.We followed the management of datain every poem, found the order it soughtto establish. What's a foot doing here?Nothing should stand between the poetand the thing perceived. Montaguedoes not encrust his verse irrelevantly.

At winter's end, Gerry, Bob, and I stoppedto buy a fifth of Jameson and handed itto Kinsella when he opened the door.He read the label, almost smiled, and setthe bottle down on a credenza. Sayingwe'll address this later, he led us tothe dining table where the light never wavered.

Our poems were read in the living room,not the dining room. We sat in a loosearc of easy chairs, subjecting the workto a primary appreciation. One nighta month to us, three nights to Eliot, Pound, Murphy. He would call oneof our names, nod in the chosen poet'sdirection, lift the paper into the lightof his reading lamp, and directhis avid glance to our words.

At seventy-nine, his voice on the discis still deep and direct. He reads his workas you would expect, the tone sharp, pace...