Through The Square Window
Sinead Morrissey
In my dream the dead have arrived to wash the windows of my house. There are no blinds to shut them out with.
The clouds above the Lough are stacked like the clouds are stacked above Delft. They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder if it's my son they're after, his effortless breath, his ribbon of years -
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot, inured, it would seem, quite naturally to the sluicing and battering and paring back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior... One blue boy holds a rag in his teeth between panes like a conjuror.
And then, as suddenly as they came, they go. And there is a horizon from which the clouds stare in,
the massed canopies of Hazelbank, the severed tip of Strangford Peninsula, and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork in my mouth. stopper-bottled, in fact, like a herbalist's cure for dropsy.
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15 comments:
Adrian:
Killer poem. Tell us more about the poet. And except for shitty movies, was your trip to NYC memorable?
David!
I was just gushing about you yesterday to a fellow hack. When's the big Ozzie book tour coming? (You'll be hard pressed to make a bigger splash than Oprah.)
Sinead's about 38 and lives in Belfast. She's quite the scholar with a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and a number of awards under her belt.
There's an article in the Guardian that deconstructs this poem and gets much of it wrong:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/apr/07/poemoftheweek
she doest understand that the "with" at the end of the sentence she complains about is not a mistake but a use of dialect.
David
I didnt have enough time to do much of anything in NYC. I went to a few galleries, tramped around the old neighbourhood (on 122nd Street) saw some relatives and friends. My one culinary adventure was a delicious burger at the Shake Shack.
At least you arrived in time for the snow. I'm sure that made the Shake Shack all the more grand.
David
No the snow was a bloody nightmare. I got shat on twice, on the way down from Boston and the next day on the way out to JFK. My time in New York gave me a very clear reminder of the seven years I lived in the city and was a nice summary of the good and the bloody awful.
oh dear, this looks like another reason why I should buy that new Irish anthology. Only trouble is, it's such a BIG BOOK and they're annoying to browse (have Ballard's stories all in one, was a mistake - should have bought it in 2vols.)
If you do a poet a month for us now, that will fill in a few gaps nicely.
Dissection of poetry is a bit weird, isn't it? I read the poem and then a bit later went over and read the Guardian site, and was bit taken aback by the reviewers arrogant confidence. It's funny that being in the midst of Stuart Neville's Collusion and being reminded of Ghosts of Belfast, I had a very different sense of this than the reviewer, which is not to say that my sense of it too wasn't entirely wrong.
Gen
What an odd coincidence, I had exactly the same thought about that Ballard book. Its just too massive. I didnt buy it for that very reason.
I'll try and pull out a few contemporary poets as well as a few old but lesser known chestnuts.
Seana
The reviewer is certainly off on the track about the "with" thats for certain and her tone is certainly irritated/angry for some reason.
Interpretations of poems are always personal, but here's my short take on that poem:
The dreamer sees herself in the material world. The windows toward the infinite appear square to the dreamer, though on the other side they might appear round or simply as shafts of infinite light.
"The clouds above the Lough are like the clouds above Delft. They have the glutted look of clouds above water."
The ocean is infinite and suggestive of the Oversoul, the collective unconscious. The clouds are glutted because there is a tension in the air, as if before a rainstorm.
The Delft may be an allusion to the Vermeer or even to Dali's The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, or just to the metaphor of finite art--in any case, there is anxiety and tension here--for the dreamer.
The dreamer can see the dead plainly, indeed their heads are huge, the blue fellow she almost recognizes. But her tension is born of her increasing knowledge of death, her fear of death, and especially her anxiety over the safety of the child.
The child sleeps, not old enough to know the dead or to fear death, though death is all around.
"And then, as suddenly as they came, they go. And there is a horizon from which the clouds stare in."
Here, the dreamer begins to awake, the dead vanish, the infinity becomes finite again.
"the massed canopies of Hazelbank, the severed tip of Strangford Peninsula, and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in."
Here the dreamer further arouses and the diffuse becomes dense. The vague metaphoric descriptions, used earlier in the poem, vanish and become concrete and location specific.
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork in my mouth. stopper-bottled, in fact, like a herbalist's cure for dropsy.
Fully awake now, the dreamer's knowledge of death has sunk back to subliminal denial. She lives in finite time, and she can no longer speak of infinity.
The infinite spirit is water. The idea is that that we are like individual drops of water, washed up on these material shores by ocean waves, we separate and become stranded, aliens here. We develop individual egos and no longer recognize each other nor our connection, our common humanity.
Eventually (and fearfully), we die, evaporate, or otherwise return and are reabsorbed by the sea, of which we were a part of all along.
The last line of the poem, about a herbalist's cure for dropsy, speaks to the dreamer wanting to dry out, to shed herself of the infinite water she has glimpsed in her dream.
I never heard of the poet before, and I've no doubt that if she saw this, she would disavow any such interpretation. That's why interpretations are always personal.
But if you happen to like such close interpretations of novels, you might take a look at my daily blog. I posted my review of Alan Glynn's WINTERLAND this past week, and I'll be posting my close interpretation of a Ross MacDonald novel tomorrow. Who knows which mystery novelist I'll pick on next?
Richard
I think I'd go along with some of what you say. I'd agree about the Vermeer certainly and the lurking presence of death.
I do think that some interpretations are better than others and I'd agree that the poet does not have a monopoly on the interpretation of his or her work. Sometimes they're in error about their own work. For example, Ridley Scott's interpretation of his own film Blade Runner is, in my view, quite mistaken.
Look forward to reading your other reviews...
I wrote my first ever haiku and my first ever sonnet the other day. By gum, sonnets are fiddly little things.
On a poetry theme and for Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, this adaption of Humpty Dumpty was written by someone called Dylan Curry.
Once upon a wall of stone
Sat Humpty Dumpy all alone
Shrouded in a web of gloom
His fate as near as tomorrow’s tomb
For earth called him
As he teetered and fell
And the ground took him
And mangled his shell
All the angels in heaven
And Demons below
Were soaked in yolk
As they fought for his soul3
Now my own days grow shorter
The final hour is soon
And as Humpty before me
I must bid you adieu
Adrian-if you have time to write a piece for How I Came to Write this Book" for my blog, I'd love to have it.
Rob
Nice work from your "friend"!
Patt
Would love to. Wont be as interesting as McFetridge though!
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