Gerald Stern, "Bolero" and the Roaring I

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/146770

Gerald Stern’s “Bolero” is a rabble-rousing poem that stirs me up, incites me almost to internal riot, and makes me want to love it. However, it fails to convey the rational components of its argument. In the end, we sense an emotional logic, but its left-brained component leaves us with as many questions as answers.

    With its run-on lines, its (arguably) run-on sentences, and no commas, no pauses of any kind until the final word,  “Bolero” is a rushing, breathless thing. There’s a lively, appealing gusto and some compelling images, such as an azalea bush that’s “firing” and a Japanese maple

that “was roaring” and the speaker’s stocking feet on the “lacquered floor.” And for me, the final line is the most energetic and appealing of all: “where / were you when I was burning alive, nightingale?”

But I’m almost as full of questions as enjoyment and affection. Here are some, offered breathlessly, perhaps.  

What if a reader does not know Ravel’s Bolero?  Granted, it’s famous, but must one hear or remember it to “get” the poem?

Why the odd line breaks such as “firing / away” or “daylight and / turned”  or “for it was / time”?  Have I already answered this in noting how the poem strives for unbridled energy? Is that energy too intense to pay attention to syntax and the point where its poetic line would normally end?

I do see a rationale for the break at end of Line 2, with “roaring I.” With this enjambment Stern is able to make both the Japanese maple and the speaker  things that “roar.”  A “roaring I” is part of the speaker’s characterization of himself.

One Roaring I (St. Clairsville, Ohio)

 

It also makes sense to pause at “roaring I,” in order to emphasize it as its own entity; the roaring I is a being, and to build suspense, as it were, we must wait till the next line to hear what this rampaging thing might do.

More Roaring I  (The Speedtrap Diner, Woodville, Ohio)

Some additional, random questions:  What might “sugar and barley . . .  come to”?  Beer?  Bread? In my quick Google search, I found that sugar and barley yield hard candy. I don't see how that's part of the poem, unless Bolero has the feel of candy.

In what way is loyalty relevant? To whom should the speaker be loyal? Ravel? Or his lover or his wife or his son?  Or his own energy in decades past?  What style might be  “too nostalgic”? His dancing style? Or is it Bolero that’s too nostalgic?

Who is the nightingale? Ravel? Or the speaker’s wife, who is not present for his mad dancing in the kitchen? Or a former lover? The speaker’s “burning alive”—is that his own dancing, his feeling the music in the present moment? Or is it a mental picture of himself in the past, along with a thinner waist?

If not, whose waist is “that thin”?  His son’s?  His wife’s? Has he found himself in an old photo? When, in the timeline of the poem, did that happen?

Even the final line, which I love, is full of questions. How does the speaker get from nostalgia to “burning alive” or “nightingale”? Is this burning alive a good thing—a kind of intensity and vitality? Or was he burning up and wasting away in some deathly fever, with unfulfilled passion?

Nightingale!!  Fever

The nightingale is one of the most romantic birds available as an image—is it a term of endearment here, or are the bird and its music somehow blameworthy in the speaker’s burning alive? Isn't that accusation I hear in the final line? Can it be both? Neither? Is the nightingale an actual bird, whose music somehow connects to Ravel and Bolero?

Floating I

Gerald Stern is about as major a living poet as we have in America, so I want to digest every piece of this or any Stern poem. Maybe “Bolero” is one of those poems where a reader cannot explain just what the poet is saying, no matter how attracted he is to the poem’s lively longing. For me, what’s lovable and stirring are the poem’s energy and its homey specific details. It’s full of heart, but its rational head is confused. Or at least my head is confused—enough to prevent being swept by this engaging, rowdy piece that seems to want to sweep me away.  

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/146770 

Haiku, Basho, Sentence Structure

How Many Pedants Does It Take To Screw in a Light Bulb?

As I mentioned a while back, I’m not usually a fan of haiku, though I do prefer sensory language the way haiku lovers apparently do. What makes imagery resonate is a very subjective matter, perhaps even more so in haiku than other forms. The poem below, by Basho, works for me, and I think it’s because the syntax is a little unusual, a little jolting.  (By the way, I found this haiku in the magazine American Poet, Spring 2011, where poet Aimee Nezhukumatahil discusses haibun, in which haiku plays a role).

Since Basho was writing in 17th century Japanese, I won’t fuss over the line breaks in order to arrive at the prescribed 5-7-5 syllable count or the line structure. Here is how it might look in English: 

Taken in my hand
it would melt, my tears are so
warm—this autumnal frost.

A more natural (and pedestrian?) English syntax might go like this: 

My tears are so warm

this autumnal frost would melt,

taken in my hand.

 Or,

This autumnal frost would melt,
taken in my hand,
my tears are so warm.

 Those aren't bad, and they retain the physicality of language in the other version; but I feel that holding back “this autumnal frost” and making it the conclusion adds a tension and drama that I’d miss now that I’ve seen it Basho’s way, or the way of his translator.

Whatever else this amounts to, it’s an example of the kinds of structural decisions a writer labors over. And we see the ways those choices can change the power of a sentence by arranging the placement of what’s powerful. It's really a matter of the old subject-verb-object lesson:  Who does what to whom? In the first version, "this autumnal frost" achieves power by coming last, by being built up to, and by playing against expectation. In the other versions, it's somewhat buried, made equal to the tears, the hand, the melting.

Modern cop shows ask, “Who’s the perp? Who’s the doer and who’s the victim that got done to?” Maybe poems aren't all that different. So if I’m being a pedant, a soul-crunching counter of words, a nerd, at least I’m not alone.

A pedant, a nerd, and a geek walk into a bar . . . .



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