In searching for something else, I came across this interesting page about Taggard's life and work: https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3409. The proprietor of Neglectedbooks.com established a publishing house, Boiler House Press, to reprint neglected works. Taggard's "Selected Poetry and Prose" was published by Boiler House in September 2023.
There are some short lines in there, including a narrowing into tetrameters (the lines themselves turn "sleek"!) - then finally into a trimeter - on lines 2, 3 & 4 (and the "windy" line 4 of this opening stanza, and "windy" line 3 of the closing stanza, are the only lines with anapests! The latter is a tetrameter - the only short line in that final stanza).
The middle stanza closes on a tetrameter: two pairs of beats simply and elegantly balanced (the "pure beauty" balanced with its own activity: "yearns and stirs").
"Torpid...Touch...tingles". These three words are heightened through omission of a preceding offbeat! Wonderful!
That is an odd image/turn of phrase. I can't help thinking of Achilles' heel, his vulnerable place, and how perhaps this speaker is experiencing, at once, her feeling of being caught up in a force (and "urge") beyond and more elemental than herself --- that touches her in that mortally vulnerable place. That makes sense, I think, coming just before the mention of her "little death."
But she's telling someone, the father I assume, to touch her heels--and when he does *he* will feel earth tingling? Really doesn't make much sense to me. Some quirky pregnancy-related sensation she's having in her feet, that she would like for him to experience? I don't know...
I suspect that this could mean (simultaneously) a number of things, including the death of the self (at least, the former autonomous, unattached self) and also the way that to see the next generation emerge into the world is to imagine your own exit from it.
And, too, the prospect of childbirth itself --- that even if you don't die the big final death giving birth, you are still engulfed in this process over which you have zero control, and in which who you are doesn't really matter at all. As Susannah says below, Earth's large agenda hijacks whatever the lovers' agenda might be.
This is profoundly lovely -- but I think you've undersold the eroticism, and the humor and complexity of the way that Earth's agenda hijacks the more immediate agenda of the lovers!
"You cleft me with your beauty’s pulse, and now
Your pulse has taken body...
"Earth’s urge, not mine,—my little death, not hers;
As a five-time mother, I can relate to this poem -- especially the descriptive phrases "slow and placid," "torpid, mellow, stupid as a stone" -- oh, yes. I do suspect I may have been more invested in each child's "untangling" than any of them were . . . :) Thanks for this lovely poem and your discussion!
In searching for something else, I came across this interesting page about Taggard's life and work: https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3409. The proprietor of Neglectedbooks.com established a publishing house, Boiler House Press, to reprint neglected works. Taggard's "Selected Poetry and Prose" was published by Boiler House in September 2023.
The middle stanza is actually an octave!
There are some short lines in there, including a narrowing into tetrameters (the lines themselves turn "sleek"!) - then finally into a trimeter - on lines 2, 3 & 4 (and the "windy" line 4 of this opening stanza, and "windy" line 3 of the closing stanza, are the only lines with anapests! The latter is a tetrameter - the only short line in that final stanza).
The middle stanza closes on a tetrameter: two pairs of beats simply and elegantly balanced (the "pure beauty" balanced with its own activity: "yearns and stirs").
"Torpid...Touch...tingles". These three words are heightened through omission of a preceding offbeat! Wonderful!
You're right, of course, about the octave --- I cannot count!
Happens to all of us!
I'd love to say that I do things like that on purpose, to see who's paying attention. Sadly, one person is not paying attention, and I am that person.
What an interesting poem! I'm puzzled by the bit about heels.
That is an odd image/turn of phrase. I can't help thinking of Achilles' heel, his vulnerable place, and how perhaps this speaker is experiencing, at once, her feeling of being caught up in a force (and "urge") beyond and more elemental than herself --- that touches her in that mortally vulnerable place. That makes sense, I think, coming just before the mention of her "little death."
But she's telling someone, the father I assume, to touch her heels--and when he does *he* will feel earth tingling? Really doesn't make much sense to me. Some quirky pregnancy-related sensation she's having in her feet, that she would like for him to experience? I don't know...
What do you think she means by "my little death"?
Um...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort
Yes, that, too.
I suspect that this could mean (simultaneously) a number of things, including the death of the self (at least, the former autonomous, unattached self) and also the way that to see the next generation emerge into the world is to imagine your own exit from it.
And, too, the prospect of childbirth itself --- that even if you don't die the big final death giving birth, you are still engulfed in this process over which you have zero control, and in which who you are doesn't really matter at all. As Susannah says below, Earth's large agenda hijacks whatever the lovers' agenda might be.
This is profoundly lovely -- but I think you've undersold the eroticism, and the humor and complexity of the way that Earth's agenda hijacks the more immediate agenda of the lovers!
"You cleft me with your beauty’s pulse, and now
Your pulse has taken body...
"Earth’s urge, not mine,—my little death, not hers;
And the pure beauty yearns and stirs.
That's not death to self!
As a five-time mother, I can relate to this poem -- especially the descriptive phrases "slow and placid," "torpid, mellow, stupid as a stone" -- oh, yes. I do suspect I may have been more invested in each child's "untangling" than any of them were . . . :) Thanks for this lovely poem and your discussion!
Unexplored territory, to be sure. Oh, thank you for featuring this!!!
What a stunning poem, particularly in the closing couplet, with that wonderful "to be untangled from these mother's bones."
There is something deeply satisfying about that final line!
What a wonderful poem! Thank you so much: I'm afraid I'd never heard of this poet before.