Thank you for your comments. You 'get' E.A.R., bringing him back into the light. I embraced his work more than 40 years ago and love his sonnets, and still admire the epics. His poems were instrumental in the narrative poetry revival of the 80's. In this poem, I also see, finally, what the late Marjorie Perloff carped about ("Why isn't this a novel? I don't get it," she wrote to me once about my poem, "Quiet Money."). In this E.A.R. poem, especially, one can make a sensible observation. He seems to be more comfortable writing sentences (good ones) than lines. Frost breaks through, and so does E.A.R., sometimes, but many of his poems could indeed be reorganized into paragraphs and presented as a short story, or a play, a strong one-act. Still, I love the work and cherish a 5-volume set of the complete poems, signed and numbered in pencil by the Great Man. Thank you again, Joseph, for brightening my morning.
Oct 29·edited Oct 29Liked by Sally Thomas, Joseph Bottum
I have long loved Robinson (and am currently reading his Collected Poems), and his Veteran Sirens is my favourite American poem (pipping Bogan's Medusa to the post). Thank you for making me read this one slowly and with more care than I would give it in reading his Collected Works. As usual, what stands out to me is the quality of his metaphors, which start out like odd associations, but become little poems within the poem:
as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
Here the metaphor twists back on itself, so that the jug reveals something about the child and its own inevitable death. And this is confirmed by the contrast that follows:
as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not
And here, the story summarised is even more concise: "Like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn."
The whole poem parallels social death and physical death in an interesting way.
This is probably a personal association, but "The bird is on the wing" reminds me of "The lark's on the wing" of Browning, which gives you another interesting contrast between the apparent playfulness of Mr Flood and the real fact of his impending physical and past social death.
My 25-year-old daughter is married now and is a new mom. We have texted each other random items of interest for years.
This very morning she texted me Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” with the phrase ‘This is deep.’ I had heard of neither the poem nor the author before, so I spent some of my day becoming familiar.
Now comes this essay!! I don’t believe Substack actually can do what Facebook can (can it?), but the timing for me was exquisite!😊
In an high school English class, there was a vigorous debate about whether Simon and Garfunkel's version of "Richard Cory" was better than the original. No side conceded an inch.
I hadn't thought about the name in the poem till Justin Blessinger mentioned it, but of course it's deliberate. Eben is a stone (as in Ebenezer, "stone of help" in 1 Samuel). And then there's "Flood." I don't see it as ebb and flow, exactly. The passing years are the flood, and Old Eben is the stone that's survived, for a while.
A beautifully written ode(?), to those who have lived long enough to become a relic, of a time, now long gone. The joys of living through it are gone to the emptiness and loneliness that fills up the spaces where friends, loves, and family were. Only the most intrepid can remain young through a body and mind, whose world has drifted away, so that only the eternals of this world remain.
Retired English professor here feeling utterly incompetent. I excuse myself by saying I've only read the poem a very few times, never studied it or taught it . . . but I entirely missed the "ebb and flow" of the name until today! I enjoyed your commentary and I have always felt such a tug of compassion at the last lines.
Protestants of the era would have known that his name means "stone" ("Here I Raise my Ebenezer / Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) being a popular hymn. A stone may be used for sinking or shoring. Ebb and flow indeed. And the stone of help was raised in a high point near where one worked a a reminder...
I cannot help but think of Yeats's "Easter 1916": "Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream."
An all-time favorite. Had it (and lost it) by heart many times. Even wrote two poems shall we say, using it. Mrs. Pastor, twelfth-grade AP English teacher, first recited it to our class in 1965 and I was hooked ever after. Finally, the most popular bar in Ann Arbor when I graduated (1970) was called Mr. Flood's.
An oddball is "an eccentric or odd person, a person of unconventional views or habits" says my O.E.D. and adds, "Cf, screwball," a wonderful term from base ball. If so, then Robinson is in good company--Baudelaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Lear, Robinson Jeffers, John Clare, Tom O'Bedlam--even Emily Dickinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley were persons of unconventional views and habits. That his status as a highly regarded poet did not protect him more from life's vicissitudes puts him with John Clare, Poe, O'Bedlam--and raises questions of social isolation in rural life, class and mental health. "Oddball," I think, gives him more agency than this rather frail man seems to have had. The work of Thomas Hardy, so much more vigorous and hale, makes an interesting contrast and comparison.
Thank you for your comments. You 'get' E.A.R., bringing him back into the light. I embraced his work more than 40 years ago and love his sonnets, and still admire the epics. His poems were instrumental in the narrative poetry revival of the 80's. In this poem, I also see, finally, what the late Marjorie Perloff carped about ("Why isn't this a novel? I don't get it," she wrote to me once about my poem, "Quiet Money."). In this E.A.R. poem, especially, one can make a sensible observation. He seems to be more comfortable writing sentences (good ones) than lines. Frost breaks through, and so does E.A.R., sometimes, but many of his poems could indeed be reorganized into paragraphs and presented as a short story, or a play, a strong one-act. Still, I love the work and cherish a 5-volume set of the complete poems, signed and numbered in pencil by the Great Man. Thank you again, Joseph, for brightening my morning.
I have long loved Robinson (and am currently reading his Collected Poems), and his Veteran Sirens is my favourite American poem (pipping Bogan's Medusa to the post). Thank you for making me read this one slowly and with more care than I would give it in reading his Collected Works. As usual, what stands out to me is the quality of his metaphors, which start out like odd associations, but become little poems within the poem:
as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
Here the metaphor twists back on itself, so that the jug reveals something about the child and its own inevitable death. And this is confirmed by the contrast that follows:
as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not
And here, the story summarised is even more concise: "Like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn."
The whole poem parallels social death and physical death in an interesting way.
This is probably a personal association, but "The bird is on the wing" reminds me of "The lark's on the wing" of Browning, which gives you another interesting contrast between the apparent playfulness of Mr Flood and the real fact of his impending physical and past social death.
I know you love Robinson and was hoping you'd chime in. Thank you for those insights.
My 25-year-old daughter is married now and is a new mom. We have texted each other random items of interest for years.
This very morning she texted me Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” with the phrase ‘This is deep.’ I had heard of neither the poem nor the author before, so I spent some of my day becoming familiar.
Now comes this essay!! I don’t believe Substack actually can do what Facebook can (can it?), but the timing for me was exquisite!😊
In an high school English class, there was a vigorous debate about whether Simon and Garfunkel's version of "Richard Cory" was better than the original. No side conceded an inch.
I hadn't thought about the name in the poem till Justin Blessinger mentioned it, but of course it's deliberate. Eben is a stone (as in Ebenezer, "stone of help" in 1 Samuel). And then there's "Flood." I don't see it as ebb and flow, exactly. The passing years are the flood, and Old Eben is the stone that's survived, for a while.
I hadn't thought of it as deliberate in that way, but of course --- now it's pointed out to me, it's obvious
A beautifully written ode(?), to those who have lived long enough to become a relic, of a time, now long gone. The joys of living through it are gone to the emptiness and loneliness that fills up the spaces where friends, loves, and family were. Only the most intrepid can remain young through a body and mind, whose world has drifted away, so that only the eternals of this world remain.
Retired English professor here feeling utterly incompetent. I excuse myself by saying I've only read the poem a very few times, never studied it or taught it . . . but I entirely missed the "ebb and flow" of the name until today! I enjoyed your commentary and I have always felt such a tug of compassion at the last lines.
Protestants of the era would have known that his name means "stone" ("Here I Raise my Ebenezer / Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) being a popular hymn. A stone may be used for sinking or shoring. Ebb and flow indeed. And the stone of help was raised in a high point near where one worked a a reminder...
I cannot help but think of Yeats's "Easter 1916": "Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream."
An all-time favorite. Had it (and lost it) by heart many times. Even wrote two poems shall we say, using it. Mrs. Pastor, twelfth-grade AP English teacher, first recited it to our class in 1965 and I was hooked ever after. Finally, the most popular bar in Ann Arbor when I graduated (1970) was called Mr. Flood's.
An oddball is "an eccentric or odd person, a person of unconventional views or habits" says my O.E.D. and adds, "Cf, screwball," a wonderful term from base ball. If so, then Robinson is in good company--Baudelaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Lear, Robinson Jeffers, John Clare, Tom O'Bedlam--even Emily Dickinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley were persons of unconventional views and habits. That his status as a highly regarded poet did not protect him more from life's vicissitudes puts him with John Clare, Poe, O'Bedlam--and raises questions of social isolation in rural life, class and mental health. "Oddball," I think, gives him more agency than this rather frail man seems to have had. The work of Thomas Hardy, so much more vigorous and hale, makes an interesting contrast and comparison.
All quite true, especially the point about agency.
I've always loved "Secure, with only two moons listening" since I first read the poem in high school — which is the age to encounter Robinson.