Thursday, February 18, 2010

I am sitting here in Massachusetts, in my sister's old bedroom, digesting several quarts of coffee and thinking about Dickens. A garbage truck is growling in the distance; downstairs my mother is chattering with my older son. My younger son is still asleep, recovering from last night's onslaught of thrilling Olympic television. I have no idea what we will be doing today, except that it's liable to involve money and stores since there is not a lot do around here that involves anything else.

So I will open my collected Hayden Carruth at random and see what he has to say about the matter. And here is the line:

"So many poems about the deaths of animals."

Amazing, isn't it, how well this "find a random line" approach works?--that is, if one believes that poetry should be responsible for making us wince. Which I do.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

The Carruth line sparked my mind to recall this Wallace Stevens poem -- my absolute favorite of his. I love the final line.



Poetry Is A Destructive Force

That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.

Corazon, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.

He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast
Its muscles are his own...

The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.

Dawn Potter said...

Also, the deaths of animals, particularly domestic animals, can be such a private sorrow.

charlotte gordon said...

I think of your goat in Tracing Paradise.
You are in MA! Come see me.

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