Please avoid close reading of some poems and weather forecasts

Not with bated breath, but somewhat pensively, we await the forecast storm's arrivals. Recent reports vary from 5" to 15" or 4" to 8" and much in-between for our area. Meteorologists tell us "it all depends" on a number of factors, especially layers of warm air in the mid to upper atmosphere. We can and do expect a mix of rain, sleet, snow, all of the above and other for the next 48 hours or so. If we remain as lazy as we have threatened to be, and just let whatever accumulates melt at its own pace, rather than shovel or blow or plow it, putting out the trash bin Friday might prove to be an interesting challenge if there are (is?) indeed 6"or more of heavy, wet snow covering the drive.

an unusual broadside

Photo by J. Harrington

We doubt very much that William Carlos Williams had this kind of weather in mind when he wrote the poem reprinted on the Wisconsin barn siding pictured above, discovered as we once searched in April for our on farm CSA pickup. We've read the poem in the picture a number of times over the years and we've never quite been sure what the poet did have in mind. "so much" of what depends? And, any wheel barrow outside in our neighborhood over the next few days, whether it's red, or green or black or..., will certainly be glazed with rain water, and snow, and possibly, ice. We expect that those who keep chickens will make sure they're not out in the storm next to any wet, glazed wheel barrows, or, if the barrows and the chickens are inside a barn like the one shown, the barrow isn't likely to be glazed. Unless, there's a leak in the barn through which the water, in whatever form, penetrates roof or siding or is blown through open doors, which might again put the chickens at risk.

the poem in context

Photo by J. Harrington

We've just provided a small example of the kind of issues in which a reader can become entangled while exploring some poetry, whether or not the reader engages in what is know as "close reading." Edward Hirsh, in A Poet's Glossary, informs us that "The New Critics practiced explication, which they called close reading, the detailed textual analysis of poems. The idea was too regard the poem as a unified object.... They dismissed trying to determine authorial intent,..." At the risk of appearing flippant, might we suggest they focused on the sound, and (not) the fury? We expect both, even in quiet poems.

As part of our National Poetry Month celebration this April, we herewith announce that we have decided we are neither obliged nor obligated to like all poems, poets, forms or topics equally. We have been developing a particular fondness for most of the "plain spoken" works of Gary Snyder, Ted Kooser and Ray Carver, much of the poetry of Jim Harrison, and almost all of Joy Harjo's writing. We've gone nearly full circle on Robert Bly and have come to appreciate more and more of his poems. Other poets near the tops of our lists include Wendell Berry, several handful of Minnesota and midwest poets, Robert Frost, Donald Hall... clearly, we're approaching a point of being somewhere between eclectic and indiscriminate. There is so much good to great poetry, it's almost always possible to find poems and poets a reader can reliably enjoy but sometimes one must separate wheat from chaff and the only way we know how to do that is by reading. We've just demonstrated another way that poetry is like life.

Blizzard

By William Carlos Williams

Snow: 

years of anger following 

hours that float idly down — 

the blizzard 

drifts its weight 

deeper and deeper for three days 

or sixty years, eh? Then 

the sun! a clutter of 

yellow and blue flakes — 

Hairy looking trees stand out 

in long alleys 

over a wild solitude. 

The man turns and there — 

his solitary track stretched out 

upon the world. 

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