First, there is the poem itself, the actual words on the page. Second is the myth of Icarus. Third and fourth are the biographies of Rukeyser found at the Poetry Foundation and at the Academy of American Poets (those fantastic folks who bring us National Poetry Month). It's in the latter that we find a strong hint that may help explain Hoagland's choices.
“Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States in its range of reference, its generosity of vision, and its energy," wrote Adrienne Rich. “She pushes us, readers, writers, and participants in the life of our time, to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics.”
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| "The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."
Photo by J. Harrington
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Waiting for Icarus
Muriel Rukeyser
He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don’t cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
"...the place of feelings and memory in politics," combined with a "generosity of vision" doesn't sound much like contemporary politics. It takes me back to President Kennedy's inaugural address “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Try as I might, I cannot picture those words coming from the 45th president, can you? At the risk of reading way too much into this poem as one of the Twenty Poems, we ask whether "Waiting for Icarus" might suggest that we have flown too close to the sun by trying to turn the sum of individual goods into the Common Good. Or, might we need to remember that sometimes the whole can be much less than the sum of its parts? It was another Kennedy, Robert, President Kennedy's brother, who cautioned us:
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.We believe we've not seen any better example of "the place of feelings and memory in politics" than that offered by either Kennedy. Can "Twenty Poems" lead to a restoration of feelings, other than anger and revenge and winning at any cost, to politics, the kind of feelings evoked by the poetry of the Kennedy quotations?
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