[New-Poetry] On the Excellence of Housman's Poem
Anny Ballardini
anny.ballardini at gmail.com
Sat Feb 7 22:11:06 EST 2009
You did your homework.
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 1:47 AM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>wrote:
> A Rough Attempt At Rating Housman's Cherry Blossom Poem
>
> II
>
>
> Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
> Is hung with bloom along the bough,
> And stands about the woodland ride
> Wearing white for Eastertide.
>
> Now, of my threescore years and ten,
> Twenty will not come again,
> And take from seventy springs a score,
> It only leaves me fifty more.
>
> And since to look at things in bloom
> Fifty springs are little room,
> About the woodlands I will go
> To see the cherry hung with snow.
>
> A. E. Housman
>
>
> My paraphrase (with some metaparaphrasing in italics):
>
> Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
>
> The boughs of the cherry trees, which are the most beautiful trees
>
> Is hung with bloom along the bough,
>
> are laden with blossoms at this time
>
> And stands about the woodland ride
>
> and line the trail through the woods
>
> Wearing white for Eastertide.
>
> decked out in a white hue appropriate for Easter
> (*which is the happiest time of the year*)
>
> Now, of my threescore years and ten,
> Twenty will not come again,
>
> At this time, twenty of the seventy years (*the Bible suggests I'll have*)
>
> are gone permanently.
>
> And take from seventy springs a score,
>
> If you subtract twenty springtimes from seventy
>
> It only leaves me fifty more.
>
> it will leave me just fifty more years of life
>
> And since to look at things in bloom
> Fifty springs are little room,
>
> Because fifty years of springtimes don't give one much time
> to enjoying looking at Nature's blossomings
>
> About the woodlands I will go
>
> I'll proceed through the woods (right away)
>
> To see the cherry hung with snow.
>
> To take in (as much as I can of) the beauty of the snow-like blossoms of
> the cherry tree.
> The snow is metaphorical because:
>
> (1) the speaker is going to "look at things in bloom."
>
> (2) the speaker has be celebrating spring entirely to this point; nothing
> he's said indicates
> that he's going to wait until winter comes, then go out and look at the
> snow on the cherry
> trees (which, in any case, would be little different from the snow on other
> deciduous
> trees); among other problems with the emotional logic of this, it suggests
> that he is
> capable, after all his praise of them, of forgetting about the cherry
> blossoms out there for
> him to enjoy right now.
>
> (3) I simply can't read the poem as not being about someone fully engaged
> in the moment-
> -the speaker spends four lines speaking in the highest terms of the beauty
> of cherry
> blossoms, then six indicating how little time he has to enjoy them (the
> blossoms) despite
> his having fifty more years to live; this sets up his last two lines as
> close to the synthesis
> of a standard syllogism: cherry blossoms are worth seeing; I haven't much
> time to see
> them; therefore, I will--what? put on my snowshoes are go look at them when
> they have
> snow on their branches? Not for me.
>
> (4) the argument has been made that "snow" as a metaphor comes out of
> nowhere--but
> earlier in the poem, the trees are personified; that they are "hung" with
> blooms is
> somewhat figurative, too, suggesting, as it does, not the sprouting of
> blooms, but
> someone's going about decorating them. In any case, the metaphor in line
> four is an
> involved, important one--the trees aren't just wearing human apparel, they
> are celebrating
> the season.
>
> (5) if the poet wanted us to believe the speaker was going to look at the
> cherry trees in
> winter, he could easily have changed the poem to tell us that explicitly:
> for instance, by
> saying, "About the woods, I'll also go/ When blooms have been replaced by
> snow." Or the
> like. Why would the poet not have made sure we saw the point if it was
> that? Was he
> some kind of devious Empsonian? He doesn't seem so to me.
>
> (6) I would add that "snow" as a metaphor gives the poem a nice climax that
> echoes what
> I consider the main virtue of the poem, its contrasting light and dark, and
> the transient and
> enduring.
>
> (7) Even with its rhetoric, the poem seems to be speaking of blossoms as it
> ends, not of literal snow, because it ends with a near repeat of its second
> line. This could be taken as a clever twist--first spring, then winter; but
> it seems too abrupt for me, and my other arguments are against it. The
> final lines work far better for me as a satisfying complete return to its
> initial subject.
>
> By my revised check-list, this poem qualifies as excellent because:
>
> (1) it both expresses things importantly true and represents things
> centrally beautiful.
>
> a. it expresses the joy of an individual thinking about and anticipating
> seeing the beauty of
> cherry trees in bloom (an implied synecdoche for spring); it thus
> represents something
> centrally beautiful: a human being's love for Nature and beauty
>
> b. it expresses the belief that cherry trees in bloom and, implicitly,
> Nature (and existence) is
> not only beautiful but, in human terms, inexhaustible because a full
> lifetime will barely, or
> not, give us time fully to enjoy it; it thus expresses something that will
> seem to many
> people imprtantly true--that existence's beauty makes life worthwhile; at
> the same time, the
> poem accentuates the beauty of spring by contrasting it with winter at the
> end, and with
> arithmetic in the middle.
>
> c. blending in with a. and b. is what it suggests about the brevity of
> human life: we have
> little time to enjoy its beauty, so we should make the most of what time we
> have--which is
> so clearly importantly true that, stated in prose, it is a banality. Note,
> however, that
> Housman gives this carpe diem them an amusing twist (in keeping with the
> high spirits of
> the piece: the poem is not about making the most of the day but of one's
> lifetime.
>
> d. in the meantime, in stating that--for its speaker, at any rate--looking
> at cherry trees
> hung with blossoms is of first importance, it expresses something else that
> is importantly
> true to non-utilitarians: that beauty is second to nothing else in value to
> a human life
> Indeed, for the speaker, it is something to devote fifty springs to, not
> just a day--he isn't
> thinking of a fling with Persephone but marriage to her.
>
> e. at the same time, it suggests with a reference to easter, and references
> to spring, not to
> mention its focus on cherry blossoms, the cyclic ongoingness of existence:
> however fragile
> and transient Nature's cherry blossoms are, and--implicitly--human life,
> rebirth will occur;
> it thus expresses a third thing importantly true for the religious, and
> even for those who
> are not religious but believe in the kind of reincarnation Shelley and
> Nietzsche did (and I
> do); for those who don't believe in reincarnation, it still expresses the
> important truth that
> Nature itself will endure.
>
> f. finally, the poem is itself an object of beauty due to its sounds,
> images and diction,
> sufficiently so in my view for me to be able confidently to claim it
> represents something
> which is centrally beautiful--itself, in particular, and poetry, in
> general.
>
> (2) it is at least somewhat complicated by Thematic Misdirection, or
> something that makes
> its ultimate meaning or effect difficult quickly to ascertain, but
> eventually achieves Clarity;
>
> Few, I think, would argue that Housman's poem is unclear. But its full
> meaning takes time
> to get to, it seems to me. It also has a personification not brilliant but
> perfect for the poem
> that complicates the poem just enough to provide what seems to me
> sufficient Thematic
> Misdirection. I say that because I believe all figures of speech do
> this--they are errors
> generating confusion it takes a mind a few seconds to overcome. Metrical
> poetry also is
> different enough from prose to slow a reader's journey toward understanding
> the poem in
> whole. This poem is far from having the thematic misdirection many poems
> have, but it
> has enough, so gets a check here.
>
> (3) it has a Unifying Principal, or some meaning or image or the like which
> pulls its
> elements reasonably close together;
>
> I presented my interpretation of the poem as a unified set of four
> consequential truths and a
> closely inter-related representation of beauty. Its packaging as a lyric
> poem of beauty
> further unifies it. So the poem scores well here.
>
> (4) it contains few or no superfluous words;
>
> All the poem's words seem necessary either to its meaning or its acoustics,
> and only rarely
> not to both. All metrical poems have occasional words that are there for
> the metrics or
> rhyme almost entirely, or fall out of one or the other of those things to
> maintain meaning.
> So the poem gets a check here, too.
>
> (5) it boasts some constituent of substance that few or no other poems have
> such as
> uncommon diction, grammar, expressive modality (e.g., mathematics, visual
> art), and imagery;
>
> To me the main special constituent this poem has that few of no other poems
> have is the
> wry interruption from pure, almost too sweet lyric, into grade school
> arithmetic it takes--
> with a Biblical allusion giving it ponderousness completely opposed to the
> lightness of
> cherry blossoms, and delight in cherry blossoms. This strikes me as a
> wonderful change of
> tone: cerebral analysis versus emotional spontaneity, heaviness versus
> gaiety, play,
> implicitly, versus duty.
>
> I suspect but would not swear that the poem also has a melodiousness rare
> in poetry, a
> melodiousness kept from excess by the speaker's drawn-out calculations.
> One other
> triumph it achieves, although I would not call it uncommonly effective, is
> its
> personification of the cherry trees as wearing white garments to celebrate
> Easter. We're in
> the archetypal here: Spring! Rebirth! Celebration! Joy! Universal Love
> of Existence!
>
> (6) it avoids excessive use of inappropriate Cliches of diction, imagery or
> thought; too
> overt Sentimentality and hackneyed use of some technique or form;
>
> I give it a check here, too. It uses a standard form, but it's one
> appropriate to a fairly
> serious albeit happy work: pentameter and tetrameter (as opposed to
> Dickinson's more
> jingly tetrameter and trimeter), with missing weak stresses at the
> beginning of several
> lines, which enlivens the poem, to my ear. Nothing brilliant about the
> rhymes, but they
> work as well as the rhymes or just about any poem. "Along the bough," for
> instance, is
> pretty clearly in the poem for meter and rhyme since it's unneeded for the
> meaning--where
> else would blooms be hung? But it works so well melodationally, one can't
> reasonably
> criticize it. "Is hung with bloom along the bough" not only closes an
> end-rhyme, but
> carries out a b- and an l-alliteration, and a g-consonance, and four open
> vowels combine
> with the two l's and the w to liquify the line, the l's in particular
> carrying on the l-
> alliteration that begins the poem, and continues into the third line. And
> the w's go on in
> the rest of this stanza to form a 4-member alliteration. The sound effects
> in the rest of the
> poem are similarly effective. And, as I mentioned in my brief against
> taking "snow" as
> literal snow, the poem is a near-perfectly crafted little mechanism, with a
> theme stated at
> its beginning, veered rather distantly from, then returned triumphantly to.
>
>
>
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--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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