On a Poet

Rae Armantrout, poet, in the most recent issue of American Poet, discusses this poem by Joseph Massey (from his chapbook Property Line) saying:



"The connotations of the few nouns, verbs, and adjectives in this small poem tug in two opposed directions. On one side we find "vortex", "navigate," and "path" -words which suggest purpose and concentration. On the other side we find "unraveled" and the cloud of "gnats." These words suggest entropy adn randomness. Among these objects of attention an Olsonian tension "holds." The subject-noun of the poem, "hummingbird" occipies middle ground. We expect a humming bird's movement to be erratic, flitting, but here the bird is seeen as almost comicall purposeful and direct, pursuing its ends through an entropic world. Is the poem, like the humingbird, penetrating determinedly into a world of receding and collapsing phenomena? Is the tension in th epoem (in all poems?) between such precision and such unraveling?

The is much to say about the sound of this poem and the way the syllables juxtapose. There are the six assonant short "a"s in "gnats", "nasturtiums", "navigates", "unraveled", "gravel" and "path"; the subtle scrambled rhyme in "hummingbird" and "nasturtium" the off-rhyme of "unraveled" and "gravel"; and there's the way stress falls on the first syllable in so many of these words, i.e. "Hummingbird", "vortex", "navigates", "gravel". As Olson says, a "head shows" in the play of (these) syllables indeed.

I find it refreshing and somehow also sobering to observe the way Massey sticks so closely to the perceptual world. Like William Carlos Williams, he challenges us to see the value in putting things in words. What does dependo n that famous red wheel barrow or on these nasturtiums? Is the question retro or is it time to ask again? How do we move from perception to experience, from experience to thought?" What sort of "property line" divides on e perceptual event from another?"


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Something to discuss perhaps.