6.14.2006

Keep on Readin'-Along-with Rest Note :

Poem #3 :

Pretty simple & straightforward.

3.1 : "Walk with me..." - the "turtle-dove" invoked in poem #1, here (maybe), replies, with a command to the speaker. (Lazarus still "dead to the world.")

3.2 : "empty sounds" - see C. Millard on the sudden crashing noises of the jungle (jolting, scary). Likened here to a walk through poetry.

3.3 : "tock-tock" - the woodpecker reminds the speaker of (crucifying) nails being driven in at the "crossroad". The speaker is a bit unnerved, in the forest. "Nature was judgement." : nature itself crucifies (we are mortal creatures). "Truth - very particular" : cf. phrase in next stanza : "everything got everything else".

3.4 : "torture chamber" : again, see Millard on the Darwinian ferocity of rainforest ecology. "everything got everything else" : the voracious gourmet organisms are very particular. The two senses of "got" - knowledge ("I get it") and acquisition ("I eat it") represent the jungle as ultimate post-Edenic cul de sac. The tree of knowledge has become a poisonous wilderness. Suffering is the sum (the crossroads).

3.5
: "Back, forth..." - represents the "turn" of the (poetic) story. Contrast the arcadian image of the back-forth swingset, its equilibrium. Maybe the goal of the Lazarus-Ulysses journey (home, on earth).

3.6 : "sound was sound" - the same word oscillates (like a swing) between its two meanings, and in doing so, confirms its own "soundness". A sort of provisional answer to the anxieties in #1 & 2 about poetic solipsism - even if it's an unproven assertion. [cf. A = A : Mandelstam's "Acmeist" law of identity - vs. anxious, otherworldly Symbolism.]

3.7 : the murmured assertion of the "voice" - what "might be said" - leads onward to hopeful concluding stanza...

No comments: