All in a Day’s Work: Part II

What does work mean? Is it enough to put in a day’s work, or should our labours express some better purpose? As I suggested in Part I, thinking about the meaning of work is inescapable.

It wasn’t something poets did for a long time. Only in the nineteenth century do we find poems explicitly about working lives—and perhaps obviously so. That was an age of both the drudgery of factory work and the rise of a class of people who could choose which work they wanted to do. It’s funny how choice brings about anguish. And with anguish, of course, comes poetry.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about the soul-sucking nature of work without purpose. For him,

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

Being a Romantic guy, he contrasted his own inability to do good work with nature's natural humming rhythm of labour: bees stirring, brooks flowing, and birds flying. Nature is always at work, renewing itself. Humans are never so purposeful (at least not all the time). As nineteenth-century architecture critic John Ruskin remarked in “The Nature of Gothic,” “the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers.”

Part of Ruskin’s project was to bring moral purpose to work—to combine morbid thoughts with miserable work. Only through work could one think healthily, and only through thought could one work happily. That’s why he loved Gothic architecture so much. It was the perfect combination of artistic imagination and practical masonry. Flying buttresses not only look great, they hold up the wall!

But even by W.B. Yeats’s time, poets were still caught between the choice of working to get by, or working at what matters. In “The Choice,” Yeats ruefully remarks about concessions required by such a decision:

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

Talk about depressing. “Miserable workers” are left scarred, “morbid thinkers” are broke (no surprise there, I suppose), and both are demoralized at the end of it. Can the working life really be so bleak?

A more modern example always makes me feel better. It’s ambivalent, if not downright depressing, but it’s honest. Gary Snyder’s “Hay for the Horses” is a terse poem about an aging farmhand. It reads like a journalistic account of his hard-working morning and is capped off with a little folksy first person:

"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

Work life is just like that. It may not be what we want, but it’s what we do. What does it mean? Well, the horses got their hay.

Fun With Intertexts: Mudluscious Edition

Mudluscious is a great word. Portmanteau neologisms aren’t just for techno-geeks and superstar girl groups (remember “bootylicious?”). Mudluscious was of course the doing of e.e. cummings from “In Just-/spring.” But this post is not about “puddle-wonderful” spring (I have to save some material for next spring!).

In my last post I mentioned Marge Piercy’s 1982 poem “To Be of Use.” In it (below) she uses the phrase “the mud and the muck.” Whenever I hear that line I can’t help but hear Trisha Yearwood’s first number one hit, “She’s in Love with the Boy.” It tells the story of Katie and Tommy, “Jack and Diane” wannabees who don’t have the approval of Katie’s dad. That’s because Tommy “got the short of the stick” when it comes to brains and arrives to pick up Katie in his “beat-up Chevy truck” by “laying on the horn / Splashing through the mud and the muck.”

Could the song’s writer have known the Piercy Poem? A quick GoogleBooks search reveals that many authors have used the phrase. Books as diverse as Edward Michael Pavlic’s recent book on modernism in African-American literature, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, a saucy Victorian Romance novel, and Phonics for Dummies all contain that exact line. Of the 208 hits, however, a good number (I’m going to guess 10%) contain Piercy’s poem. These books include a self-help guide and William Ayers’ book on education. The earliest example of an author using the phrase—and the only one to antedate Piercy’s poem—was in a book called Little Mother America by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, published in 1919.

This brings up an interesting question. Given its ubiquity, is Piercy’s phrase an example of folksy charm or facile alliteration? Is this a phrase everyone uses? Your input, dear reader, is most welcome.

All in a Day’s Work: Part I

Early this morning the City of Toronto finally reached a tentative agreement with striking CUPE workers. Pending union approval, that means that garbage removal may resume as early as Thursday. That’s great news for my ‘hood, which in the last two weeks has developed charming tumbleweeds of KFC buckets and McDonald’s wrappers. It’s also great news for the thousands of striking employees who can now return to doing what they love. Well, that’s the funny thing about work: even though it may not be what you love—I doubt garbage removal is a passion for anyone other than five-year-old kids—there’s still some satisfaction in the doing. Today’s post is the first in a two-part series dedicated to poems about the agony and the ecstasy of work.

Margaret Thatcher hit on something very true when she remarked that a good day was one in which “you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it,” not one in which “you lounge around doing nothing.” Workaholics are bad sources of advice (just ask Carol Thatcher), but I think she’s right that there’s something entirely satisfying about accomplishing what’s put before us. Marge Piercy, one of my favourite living poets, wrote a great work about those people who roll up their sleeves and get it done called “To Be of Use.”

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals bouncing
like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to
move things forward,who do what has to be done, again and again.

The simple joys of manual labour and its charactering-building effects was a theme John Updike wrote about in his aphoristic “Hoeing.” But while he writes about a common activity, his language can’t help but hit at a loftier metaphor.

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
of the pleasures of hoeing;
there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this
simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks,
revealing moist-dark loam--
the pea-root's home,
a fertile wound
perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
The blade chops the earth new.
Ignorant the wise boy who
has never performed
this simple, stupid, and useful wonder.

Why would poets so often write about work that they themselves rarely do? I suspect it’s because the greatest satisfaction is in the completion and not merely the doing. Manual tasks end in something “real,” as Piercy goes on to say. Intellectual work, however, is always partial, tentative, and open to debate. It’s much more like humans are: works in progress. The sage Robert Frost put a haunting image to this idea in “The Wood-Pile.” (Hint: it’s not just a woodpile.) Out for a walk in a “frozen swamp” one winter day (how Frostian!), he comes across this sight:

It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled--and measured, four by four
by eight. And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's
cutting, Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

I think that image is incredible. It’s not only so palpable (I swear I can smell the peat with my red nose and feel the damp in my bones), but I think immensely powerful. I can’t help thinking about “God” when I think about that Woodpile. Did he turn to fresh tasks, leaving his creation to warm the forest as best we could? I realize this post has turned heavy fast. But Frost gets to the heart about work. For a while it’s satisfying enough that we do it. But in the end, we all want it to mean something.

Why Don't You Love Me?

Funny how everything old is new again. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s recent seedy email affair lavish epistolary romance was positively a throwback to a Victorian ideal of the surreptitious liaison. I wonder if this episode was brought on by the return of the loveless marriage. As Sandra Tsing Loh recently (and controversially) wrote in the Atlantic, like “fancy schools, tae kwan do lessons, and home-cooked organic food, the two-parent marriage is another impressive—and rare—attainment to bestow on our fragile, gifted children.” Marriage as the noblesse oblige of the upwardly mobile. Bummer. Who would have thought that the meritocracy would destroy marriage (I had my money on the gays). Looks like Stephanie Coontz deserves a revised second edition (see Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage). But if the marriage of social obligation brings back the flowery and furtive exultations of those in love, I’m (kind of) for it.

Until now we’ve mostly had to stumble on with angst ridden poems about unrequited love. In the morass of this much-loved teenage genre, however, lie a few hidden gems. Unlike the pathetic version beloved by the German Romantics, I thought I’d highlight a few more impudent and triumphant examples.

Nikki Giovanni has a great one in her new collection. Dripping with sass, “Why Don’t You Love Me” is a plainspoken, hand-on-your-hip gem from Ms. Giovanni.

Why don’t you
Love me

I am good with dogs
And children.

[...]

I just don’t understand

I say Jambo
When I answer the phone

And Ciao
When I hangup

I really really really
Don’t know

What more
I can do

A short poem by John Keats similarly shows that when it comes to the cool reception of his feelings, he could be a real dude with a ‘tude. “You Say You Love Me” is a bit more bombastic, but equally compelling (I love the word “inurn”).

You say you love; but then your hand
No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth,
It is like a statue's dead -
While mine to passion burneth -
O love me truly!

O breathe a word or two of fire!
Smile, as if those words should burn be,
Squeeze as lovers should - O kiss
And in thy heart inurn me! O love me truly!

One of the greatest poems has to be one by A.E. Housman (Housman conveniently, if unimaginatively, only numbered his poems). Rather than being angry or disconsolate, Housman endures his predicament stoically. Narrating from beyond the grave, he asks his former beloved to take notice of his headstone. The last line would do Marcus Aurelius proud.

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
Goodbye, said you, forget me.
I will, no fear, said I

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you

Was one that kept his word

George Jones narrated a similar story in “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” But then, as I’ve perhaps stated too many times on this blog, Country Music keeps alive some of our best literary traditions. Mark Sanford may yet have a lucrative second career…

Walkers Walks for Walking’s Sake

Walking Man 1, Alberto Giacometti (1960)

I love to go for a run. It’s a great stress reliever. But running is a pretty mindless activity, as evidenced by the fact that one of the world’s great super-long distance runners has no short term memory (see the recent article in the NYTimes). Perhaps it’s because running is a goal-oriented activity, unlike one of my favourite other de-stressors: an evening constitutional.

W.H. Auden, who was known to take long walks with friends, hit on the purposeless nature of this activity in his charming poem (you guessed it), “Walks.”

I choose the road from here to there
When I’ve a scandalous tale to bear,
Tools to return or books to lend
To someone at the other end.

Returning afterwards, although
I meet my footsteps toe to toe,
The road looks altogether new
Now that is done I meant to do.

But I avoid it when I take
A walker’s walk for walking’s sake:
The repetition it involves
Raises a doubt it never solves.

[...]

No, when a fidget of the soul
Or cumulus clouds invite a stroll,
The route I take goes roundabout
To finish where it started out.

The sense of wonder and escape a walk provides was captured by Walt Whitman in his “Song of the Open Road.” The lengthy poem, in typical Whitman fashion, evolves into a rhapsodic metaphor about common purpose. But it starts out simple, the way a walk should.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

While Whitman emphasizes the beauty and possibility of setting out on a walk, Robert Frost emphasizes the walk as a time to contemplate life’s endings. Here, Frost walks through the “headless aftermath” of a mowed field and observes a lonely tree. But this doleful occasion does yield one blossom:

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

So whether it’s a “walk in the snow” or “walk after midnight, out in the moonlight,” a walk is a great time to savour life’s joy and sadness, and return with at least one aster flower.

On Taking the Subway

Now that I live in "the boonies" (as I affectionately call my East Toronto 'hood) my morning ritual includes a commute downtown. Never much of a fan of commuting, I went in search of poetic depictions of taking the subway to burnish my dull vision of this urban rite. Unfortunately, poets and painters are about as optimistic about taking the subway as they are about taking the greyhound bus.

Mark Rothko's series of subway scenes paints a familar picture (above, 1936). His subway station is banal and industrial. Its occupents are obscure, faceless forms. The scene hovers between listless melancholy and Orphic fantasy. Are these commuters nameless cogs in the mechanics of the modern capitalist machine, or shadowy spirits doomed to wonder the underworld?

The poet Carl Sandburg captures something of the former in his compact "Subway" (1916). Here the subway is a yoke of the modern man, bearing down on him, weighting his shoulders and his soul. It is a bleak picture of the subway as transport of the working man.

DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.

The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
Throw their laughter into toil.

Hart Crane captures something more of the Orphic descent in "The Tunnel," part of his celebrated poem, "The Bridge." In it, Crane contemplates a walk, but instead decides to take the underground because "The subway yawns the quickest promise home." That famous line, I think, makes a much better slogan that the TTC's over-eager "Ride the Rocket." Though, the marketing department would be disappointed with the rest of the poem. Crane's ride is no pleasure trip. In his East River Hades he even runs into Edgar Allan Poe and his "retching flesh." But he does manage to capture something of the hectic plunge into the underworld.

Elbows and levers, guard and hissing door.
Thunder is galvothermic here below. . . . The car
Wheels off. The train rounds, bending to a scream,
Taking the final level for the dive
Under the river—
And somewhat emptier than before,
Demented, for a hitching second, humps; then
Lets go. . . . Toward corners of the floor
Newspapers wing, revolve and wing.
Blank windows gargle signals through the roar.

But despite the cramped quarters, blank stares, and irritating use of old pre-H5 subway cars on the Bloor-Danforth line (I love those orange benches!), I still enjoy the commute for one simple moment. My route takes me across the Bloor Viaduct. The windows are suddenly ablaze with the morning sunlight and a valley of green stretches out in either direction. The vision is quickly dashed as we speed underground again. But each day, for $2.75, the subway car is my Charon, ferrying me across the Acheron to my workday and home again each night. I know this image implies that work is hell, but that's for another post...

Notes on "Camp"

Susan Sontag would hate this post. For Northern Ontarians "camp" is not "a certain mode of aestheticism," and certainly not "the triumph of the epicene style." It is what Southern Ontarians might call "the cottage" and what Westerners might call "the cabin." "Camp" is anything from a one room shack to a full fledged summer home. It is, in every case, a sylvan retreat far from the bustle of city life.

Last night I stayed overnight at my camp--a modest and handsome grey-sided saltbox with a split gabled roof and sunny clerestory--on the western shore of the big lake they call Gitchigumi. It was particularly cold for July, but there was a clear sky which made for a splendid sunset.

It reminded me of my favourite Emily Dickinson poem. She writes of "Nature--the Gentlest Mother" who looks over even the tiniest of earth's creatures. The final two stanzas paint a beautiful picture of sundown and twilight:

When all the Children sleep--
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light Her lamps--
Then bending from the Sky--

With infinite Affection--
And infiniter Care--
Her Golden finger on Her lip--
Wills Silence--Everywhere--

Only Dickinson could possibly get away with making a comparative out of "infinite." But was there ever a more perfect description of this evening ritual?