Daniel
Alexander Apatiga
Professor
Simmons
English 3420
7-28-2015
All three
poets—Stevens, Crane, and Plath—search for a special effect at the end of their
poems that is often achieved through an image.
As in a play’s final act there is a resolution. At the end of the play,
when the last word has been spoken, the special effect is this lingering where
there is no more text. The stronger the
lingering effect, the stronger the quality of the poem. Arguably, this effect can only be attained by
understanding the close relationship between the reader and the narrator (or
poet). This relationship depends upon
the imagination of the poet and, as Yvor Winters outlines in his review of
Crane’s poetry, what he or she considers great: the values, morals, artistic
outlook that the poet has on poetry itself (Winters). This special effect differs from poem to poem
obviously, but also differs from poet to poet.
My essay will look at these authors’ poems with the strongest imagery,
or most affecting imagery, with special attention to the ending of poems.
First, this essay
will delineate Steven’s poetry and how his imagery reveals a lot about his interests
and character; the essay will also explore how Stevens often employs some sort
of contradiction within the last few lines that makes the reader wonder whether
he or she fully understood the poem. The
essay will draw from many examples for demonstrating how the endings of his
poems employ imagery in a way that demonstrates this intellectual equivocation.
Then, the essay will explore Plath and
how the endings of her earlier poems and those in the later collection of
poems, Ariel, seem to reflect fatalist
beliefs. Then, this essay will analyze
Crane in a manner agreeing with Winter’s assessment. Crane’s poetry has much sadness as an effect and
a nationalistic, romanticism to it, as Winters writes in his critique of “The
Bridge.” I will draw from examples of
Crane’s poems, exploring how their endings achieve a special effect through
nationalistic or romantic imagery. Finally,
this essay will compare the imagery of these three poets. This essay will hopefully draw contrasts from
other authors, especially since Sylvia Plath has had many obstacles that she
had not overcome as a writer perhaps because of her gender, whereas Crane had
his homosexuality as a source of bias that people had against his poetry. The essay’s final paragraphs will explore how
Plath is similar to Crane in the same respect that Winter wrote his review of
Crane. The paragraphs will contrast Crane’s
endings to those in Ariel, which were
Plath’s last poetry before she committed suicide. The conclusion will briefly discuss the
importance of having a special effect, or a “goosebumps” effect, in poetry.
Stevens has a
knack for including sexual innuendoes, and his interest in women pervades much
of his earlier poems in “Harmonium,” and the images in the poems’ endings often
reflect this. His special effect at the
end of many of his poems affects his reader with a taste of hetero-erotic love
for a particular woman. In the “Plot against
the Giant,” the final stanza has the image in its final few lines of lips and
throats, which reveals his interest in sexual intercourse: “Heavenly labials in
the world of gutturals, / It will undo him” (Stevens 6, lines 6-7). What will be undone is left purposely
ambiguous, but I picture him undoing his belt or something important to a woman. In the following poem in the collection,
“Infanta Marina” has the last few lines about something flowing and uttering a
“subsiding sound.” This suggests sexual
arousal. “The Snow Man” introduces the reader to Stevens’s character as being
cold, and so the final image that he expresses is a contradiction about
existence: “For the listener, who listens in the snow, /And, nothing himself,
beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (Stevens 8, lines
13-15). Those lines have the special
effect of asking me: why is that something that is there nothing? This image is unlike the endings with strong
sexual innuendoes that I have described already, but the special effect is: this
“nothing” could refer to the unseen,
and by unseen we mean his body, mind, and desires—again, something that is left
purposely unspecific. The first two
poems rely more strongly upon sex, however, for evoking a certain kind of
reading-pleasure.
Stevens’s later
poems take on many contradictions in the images of their final lines. And as the poems progress chronologically to
near his death, I believe that his poetry takes on a retrospective tone of
youthful age and yet is not reminiscent, or positive. In “The House Was Quiet and the World was
Calm,” the narrator takes the persona of the reader of the poem: the poem knows
exactly what the reader is doing, which is “…reading leaning late and reading
there” on the last line (Stevens 312).
The special effect of this image is of self-reflection and is uncanny;
the reader gleans a keen sense of Stevens’s knowledge of the reader; the reader
often finds himself (or herself) in a situation very similar to the one
described in the above poem. And the
sexual innuendo latent in Harmonium is
no longer so powerful. This
self-reflection puts the reader in a state of lingering after he or she has
read Stevens’s poem by forming a contradiction: the “summer and night” cannot
possibly be “the reader leaning late.”
(Although part of that sentence makes sense, conjoining the two
independent clauses is characteristic of Stevens that forms something akin to
an oxymoron, though far more complicated).
In “Large Red Man Reading,” the imagery is consistent and reminiscent
with that of “The House Was Quiet and the World was Calm,” except it is more
climactic in the end: “Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended
hearts, / Took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are / And
spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had / lacked” (Stevens 365,
lines 21-27). Why would he say “thin” or
“spended” about hearts? Well, they are
bi-oppositional images to “wide” and “freshly;” so, the final image has a
negative tone to it, which is more pronounced than the earlier poem. The special effect I received from reading
this ending image was the illusion of having access to the narrator’s thoughts
without actually knowing them, because he continues the theme of “nothingness”
even in this poem. If deciphered
further, Stevens has a fascination with animate bodily features that seem to
possess amorphous qualities in his later poems. For instance, in “This Solitude of
Cataracts,” the poem is about a man who is observing a river, and the narrator
takes on an omniscient, science-fiction-like diction, because of the special
effect on the final lines: “Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass, /
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time” (Stevens 366, lines
18-19). (The word “azury” is a motif
that is in the prior poem, L.R.M.R.). What
is the center of time? And why mention
planets that make passes around it? Like
a planet, a human or more particularly, a partner, can oscillate, and this man
who breaths the metal bronze is purely speculative just like a man reading from
his “blue tabulae” in the poem, L.R.M.R..
Both poems have a similar special effect: this notion of the “center of
time” and “feelings that they lacked” (from each respective poems) are both
metaphysical symbols for “nothingness;” and so as his poems get progressively
more out there, they also have a stronger special effect. In “The Plain Sense of Things,” or T.P.S.T.,
the tone of the narrator remains similar to that in his earlier works, though
it has allusions to a book—Lord of the Flies—and
the imagery of it made me think of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” with the twirling
clouds. The reality aspect of the poem
is surreal, but in the end, we are given a sudden truth as a special effect:
“The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this / Had to be imagined as
an inevitable knowledge, / Required, as a necessity requires” (Stevens 428,
lines 18-20). What is this
necessity? Is it the narrator’s sexual
drive? Again, the necessity is a
metaphor for something absolutely ambiguous. In “The Planet on the Table,” Ariel
is the subject of the poem who suddenly outpours his thoughts that were “if
only half-perceived, / In the poverty of their words, / Of the planet of which
they were part” (Stevens 450, lines 14-15).
The “they” could be referring to his poems; and so the special effect of
the last imagery of the ending of the poem evokes a sense of death for
poetry. To the omniscient, mythological
narrator who is grasping these large objects or has a Godlike perspective on
things, every human being on earth has a “poverty” of “words” for describing
anything substantial. Again, Steven’s poetry gets more and more dismal and less
positive as they progress chronologically.
In “The River of Rivers in Connecticut,” the ending image of a river
“…that flows nowhere, like a sea” on the last line seems contradictory to
reality—fantastical—as it defies the laws of physics, yet the reader must look
in the poem for complete understanding.
The contradiction lies in a situationally ironic scene: the
eye-of-the-beholder, who is the narrator (or Stevens), is making the keen
observation that the reader likes ambiguities when seeing the world and does
not with effort see the larger perspective: there might be fish in those
rivers; there is also a history with that river with respect to the Native
Indians who lived there before our arrival.
The special effect of the last image is a questioning of what the river
is if it flows nowhere. Can it then be a
river? The next poem, “Not Ideas About
the Thing But the Thing Itself,” has a purposely vague title, but the content
is clearly about a bird that Stevens will revisit again as a motif in “On Mere
Being,” his last poem. The ending image
of the former poem, N.I.A.T.B.T.I., also asks what reality is to Stevens and
how can it be knowledge if it appears as a hallucination:
“That Scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its horal rings,
Still far away. It
was like
A new knowledge of reality.” (Stevens 452, lines 13-18)
The
poem’s last image—that of the mind grasping a new thought—is like experiencing
a hallucination because of the way the narrator moves about in this poem from
image to image. This has the special
effect of questioning whether what the narrator had heard was part of reality
or not, because knowledge might not be knowledge at all—it might be
scientifically flawed or incorrect, though a paradigm nonetheless. Either way, this “new knowledge” is only the
reader who knows what has happened (a fact established earlier in the
poem).
In
Stevens’s last few poems, the poem “A Mythology Reflects Its Region,” is
largely about poetry as an art form, arguably, since he talks about the image
as though it is something that can change.
The last lines are complicated and are built from conceits and
contradictions: he says it is in his region, but is the region then not
universal if “he” refers to the reader. So
why does Stevens end with a specific image: “And it is he in the substance of
his region /Wood of his forests and stone out of his fields / Or from under his
mountains” (Stevens 476, Lines 9-11)? The special effect of the poem is that the
perspective of the poem has a large, grandiose conclusion about imagery, which
is that “The image must be of the nature of its creator” (Stevens 476, line
5). And then he narrows that vision to
his own, which is a description of a forest and mountains presumably in the
Appalachians. Stevens could also be
driving at the individual who has only a limited set of experiences from which
he can describe things. In his last
poem, “Of Mere Being,” the last imagery is again on the subject of birds, but
this time the narrator is more observant—almost as though he wishes he could go
back in time and do things over again:
“The
palm stands on the edge of space.
The
wind moves slowly in the branches.
The
bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down” (Stevens 477, lines 9-12).
“Dangl[ing]
down” produces an image equivelant of a facial expression that humans can
read. Although, the notion of a palm
standing “on the edge of space” suggests that the narrator himself, like prior
poems have suggested, has a limited, narrow perspective on life, because “space”
is a big concept, astronomically, and a potted palm is small and humble. Furthermore, “fire-fangled feathers” of a
bird suggests that this is no ordinary bird—nay, it is phoenix—though he does
not explicitly say it is. When the
phoenix dies, it resurrects itself. So
in a sense, Stevens likens himself to mystical creatures, Jesus, or he believes
in the Hindu concept of reincarnation at least.
Sylvia
Plath’s early poems seem evocative of a mood or an emotion rather than a
constant questioning as evoked by Stevens, since her ending images usually end
on a dismal note. This is, I believe,
characteristic of her fatalistic beliefs. In the poem, “Bucolics”, the poem is about two
lovers who walk together in a kind of medieval romantic fantasy gone sour,
since the language used is rather English and the setting rather simple. The ending stanza has a lot of imagery packed
in it:
“Now
he goes from his rightful road
And,
under honor, will depart;
While
she stands burning, venom-girt,
In
wait for sharper smart to fade.” (Internal.org)
This
knight who is with her who is on this “rightful road”—that seems suggestive of
the right path, which is with her, the narrator of the poem. There is a lot of metaphor in this poem for
something larger, like relationships in general. “While she stands burning, venom-girt, / In
wait for sharper smart to fade” suggests that the knight abandons her while she
is hurting, which seems foretelling of her own future, when Ted Hughes hurts
her and she commits suicide. In “Pursuit,” a poem about sexual foreplay
more-or-less if the words are taken for metaphors: “There is a panther talks me
down: / One day I’ll have my death of him;” (lines 1-2). (If she is indeed using the ancient use of
“death” to mean orgasm, than the rest of the poem can be construed to mean
sexual foreplay). The last image of the
poem, which is this image of a panther climbing the stairs has little special
effect other than the fact that someone very threatening (if the panther should
be taken as a conceit for a man) is approaching who can do God-knows what to
the narrator. If it were just a panther, then it would not
make sense that it would climb the stairs as some kind of pet. Sylvia Plath’s earlier poems lack that
special effect, somewhat, that causes a lingering after-effect than her later
poems.
Sylvia
Plath’s later poems in her collection, Ariel,
have something somewhat in common: the contemplation of suicide. Because of this, the ending image is more
dismal than in her earlier poems and they have the illusion of something
grander that is underway—like she is heading somewhere better. In her poem “Gulliver,” we see where she gets
her idea for being small and insignificant in the Bee poems just by the title
of it. The ending image of that poem is
somewhat damning to men in general, and is in that respect daring and strong:
“That resolve in Crivelli, untouchable.
/ Let this eye be an eagle, / The shadow of his lip, an abyss” (Plath
56, lines 22-25). The ending image has
the special, lingering effect of imagining letting men grow old and weary while
she enjoys life without them. In the poem
prior to “Gulliver,” “Berck-Plage,” we see a somewhat psychedelic painting of
an image: “And a naked mouth, red and awkward./ For a minute the sky pours into
the hole like plasma. /There is no hope, it is given up” (Plath page 55, lines
16-18). “Plasma” has multiple meanings,
because it could either mean plasma from the blood that is where the blood “is
suspended” and is “protein-rich” according to the OED; or, Plasma could mean the
fourth state of matter (that which is beyond gas and is the state of matter in
the Sun). Both meanings are applicable,
which can arguably give a poem its inherent strength, whenever this is true—although,
I prefer the latter meaning of the word “plasma.” The
ending image has the grand concept of hope becoming dismal. In her poem “Getting There,” the image of
“Lethe” is again brought up as it had been visited to before in her prior
poems; it means according to the OED: “A
river in Hades, the water of which produced, in those who drank it,
forgetfulness of the past.” The ending image is suggestive of her desire
to forget the past and that she cannot because Lethe is pure fantasy.
“And
I, stepping form this skin
Of
old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step
to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure
as a baby” (Plath 59, lines 66-70).
The
lingering effect of this poem is strong, of which evokes a questioning of why
she uses war-torn imagery earlier in the body of the poem and then closes it
with becoming “pure as a baby”—truly climactic in terms of a special
effect. In “Medusa,” the imagery at the
end of it is rather negative sounding: the imagery is that of a couple who are
together yet it means the exact opposite—she is far away and he has no intention
of being with her. The last line of the
poem leaves a bitter emotion in my mind, because it represents something that
is relatable and is located in a dark, dismal place in the unrequited mind:
“There is nothing between us” (Plath 61, line 41). In “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” the poem’s
content seems dismal and bleak, especially towards the last image: “Their hands
and faces stiff with holiness. / The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. / And the message of
the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence” (Plath 65, lines 25-28). This has the overpowering effect of imagining
life from the perspective of a tree, which implies she understands trees, or
will soon. Her last poem, “Wintering,”
seems to take the word “bee” and flip its meaning to “to be” as a special
effect:
“Will
the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed
in banking their fires
To
enter another year?
What
will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The
bees are flying. They taste the Spring”
(Plath 90, lines 46-50).
Despite
it clearly written as “bees” and not be’s, her complaints of living with other
people and not wanting to meet other people makes me wonder whether she had
considered this secondary, homophonic meaning.
The last poem, of which I will set my music to, has many double-meanings
that mystify femininity, perhaps because she is planning on ceasing “to be” in
its entirety. “Wintering” somewhat
reminds me of a poem by a German poet: “Erl Konig.” The last two lines is packed with many images
at once and Plath omits some obviously final-sounding lines that I would have
written, such as “They do not taste the Christmas roses anymore because she is
dead.” She sums up her life in this
poem, suggesting that it was meaningless as if she were a mere “bee.”
Hart
Crane’s collection of poems, “White Buildings,” has many poems that lack a
special effect though to other readers the poems might be evocative of just
that. In “Emblems of Conduct,” the
poem’s content is about “spiritual gates” as its main motif, since he has the
last two words of each stanza containing them.
What this spiritual gate leads to is a mystery and he does not explain,
leaving it purposely ambiguous. In the
last stanza and last few lines, the significance of “spiritual gates” is that
there is separation between people, places, and groups by this abstract
concept: “Dolphins still played, arching the horizons, / But only to build
memories of spiritual gates” (Crane 4). In
“My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” Crane’s grandmother is dead and he is morning her
absence. In the last stanza, the ending
image of nature having an anamorphic quality such as “laughter” is suggestive
of his Grandmother’s presence after all: “And the rain continues on the roof /
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter” (Crane 5, lines 25-6). In “Garden Abstract,” Crane foreshadows
perhaps his own suicide: by drowning. The ending image has an uncanny effect as
though the narrator or is the God of the Sun: “Drowning the fever of her hands
in sunlight. /She has no memory, nor
fear, nor hope / Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet” (Crane 8, lines
10-12). In “Stark Major,” Crane uses
“death” in its obsolete connotation, which is important in understanding the
ending image of the poem: “Walk now, and note the lover’s death. / Henceforth
her memory is more / Than yours, in cries, in ecstasies / You cannot ever reach
to share” (Crane 8, lines 23-4). Perhaps
Crane was bisexual, since this poem is latent with passionate jealousy for a
woman who is in the throes of intercourse with another man. Or is Crane jealous that the man who the
woman is with is without Crane? Crane
uses, in the last line, imagery that is evocative of the dismal realities of
unrequited love, and he paraphrases this beautifully. “In Shadow” is a poem perhaps about Crane’s
homosexuality since the ending image of the poem elides over “her” whoever she
might be:
“’Come,
it is too late,--too late
To
risk alone the light’s decline:
Nor
has the evening long to wait,”—
But
her own words are night’s and mine.” (Crane 10, lines 13-16)
The poem is clearly about a male
fantasy for a woman, yet this woman might be a man (to Crane); it stresses the
importance of confidence and perhaps having a confidant, which again has a
beautiful special effect. The last
image, “night,” has the symbolic meanings of darkness, despair, and being blind
in general, which is how Crane might have perceived the woman as through those
lenses. In the collection of poems, Powhatan’s Daughter, “The Harbor Dawn”
takes the reader back to when the white Westerners met Native Americans for the
first time; and, the ending image produces romantic imagery for this innocent
event:
“The
fog leans one last moment on the sill.
Under
the mistletoe of dreams, a star—
As
though to join us at some distant hill—
Turns
in the waking west and goes to sleep” (Crane 39, lines 37-41).
Of
all the authors, Plath has the most lingering after-effect at the ends of her
poems, because of how she jumps from image to image at a rapid pace. Winters has the most abstractness and is the
most enjoyable for reading when the reader has spare time. Crane’s narrator is somewhat of an enigma
because of the irony between his life and his poems, yet this irony is absent
when it comes to images of drowning since he committed suicide that way. Similarities between various works can be
observed: especially between Crane’s “Garden Abstract” and “Getting There” by
Plath, mostly in each respective poets’ desire for a strong, lingering effect
in the last few images of their poems.
Bibliography
Crane, Hart. Hammer, Langdon, Ed. Hart
Crane : Complete Poems and Selected Letters.
New York: The
Library of
America, 2006. Print.
Wallace, Stevens. Wallace
Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose. New
York: The
Library of
America, 1997. Print.
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel :
The Restored Edition. New York: HarperCollins,
2004. Print.
Winters, Yvor. Uncollected Poems and Essays. August 6th, 2015. Web.
