Robert Hass, "Dragonflies Mating"

Reminder: you may click on any Banjo52 image to enlarge it.





Blurry with desire
















All aflutter




I wonder if Robert Hass’s “Dragonflies Mating” is a history of humanity, at least our breeding, our complexity in love, including the evolutionary and the Oedipal implications. The poem is a bit long, so I’m offering the following teases in the hope of pulling you in.

“Such a terrible thing / came here with their love.”

“weeks of drinking she disappeared into.”

" . . . I’d bounce
the ball two or three times, study the orange rim as if it were,
which it was, the true level of the world, the one sure thing . . . “

“. . . [I] feel the grain of the leather in my fingertips and shoot.
It was a perfect thing; it was almost like killing her.”

“ . . . they mate and are done with mating.
They don’t carry all this half-mated longing up out of childhood
and then go looking for it everywhere.”

Notice how plain this language is. “She” disappeared into her drinking, or “I’d bounce/the ball two or three times,” or “then go looking for it everywhere.” Couldn’t such language be overheard in a coffee shop or a neighbor’s yard? But the ordinary words quickly lead to (or have grown from) images, actions, or thoughts that are anything but casual.

Here is the whole of "Dragonflies Mating":

Dragonflies Mating by Robert Hass : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

When I talked about Hass’s “Faint Music “ (May 27, 2010), I mentioned that he has me on the edge of impatience with his talk-y language. Is it poetry or prose, as I’ve asked repeatedly about contemporary verse? In both “Faint Music” and “Dragonflies Mating” I think Hass lands well inside the unsafe, tense zone of that which is poetry, where details are precise and compact, and the questions plopped on our plates are huge. Maybe it could be called poetry masquerading as conversation. The reverse of that is what causes my grumpiness.

It’s been a while since I’ve explicitly thanked The Poetry Foundation for the richness of what they make available to us. At their site, www.poetryfoundation.org , we find not only the poem, but a Dan Chiasson essay about it, as well as other work by Hass. The Poetry Foundation came into a bundle of money a few years ago, and I’m glad to see them spending it well. (Yes, my approval will make them shiver with delight).

**

Robert Hass, "Faint Music" and the Notion of Listening

< Rebekah listens to Becky's story.


I’m not ready to quit on yesterday’s topic, which might be about conversational styles, a subject about which there must be Ph.D. dissertations.

Remember the Ancient Mariner and the Wedding Guest who couldn't get away because the Mariner’s story was so compelling?

Somehow I think Robert Hass’s poem “Faint Music” is about story telling and conversational style, among other things. Where’s the heart of the story? What is it in the story that’s important to believe? How does the storyteller convince us? One answer is, “Not by noise. Not by histrionics.”


“Faint Music” is a bit close to the talk-y poetry I’m always complaining about, but I find that it passes my almighty test of offering something in almost every line that feels essential, not just to the poem and its story, but to me and other humans trying to understand more of what’s out there, maybe the how more than the why.

Hass’s new book, The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems, was reviewed by David Orr in the May 16 New York Times Book Review. I haven’t been back to Hass in over a decade, but I take it as a sign that I stumbled across the review and then “Faint Music” (at Poetry Foundation) within a couple of days of each other.

“Faint Music” is a touch long, but it’s very accessible, tells a compelling story, and packs a wallop at the end. I hope you’ll stick with it.

Faint Music by Robert Hass : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


* *