3.22.2019

Ravenna Diagram Reading Guide #4

This be the next entry in Ravenna Diagram reading notes for Susan Brown.  Inquire here for more info....


R.D. READING NOTES #4

COLD SPRING (p.6)

Poem full of obscurities.  Stanzas 1 & 2 : we are back in northern MN winter landscape.  Raven/Ravenna.  Shakespeare’s “treble-dated crow” (Phoenix & Turtle) – which, according to legend,  engenders offspring by breathing – is flying back and forth.

“scrawny schemer.... Signature / of Cain-torn soil”  :  slight mingling of Biblical and Native American legends.  Raven, along with Bluejay, appears in some Trickster stories.

“something resolute... smoke-dispute” : a basic philosophical debate – what is Death?  What is Life?

“dissipating ghost-limb, drifting / wake” : allusion to parallels between 19th-cent. Ghost Dance movement and Christian doctrines of Resurrection

“morse code... remorse” : sound echo with Latin mors, death

“chancy chancery... So choose” : the actuality of death, its duel or chess game with life, motivates the moral conscience – what shall I choose to do, how shall I live, in the face of mortality?

Only way / is up, replies the smoke” : affinity between ghost, or spirit, and smoke – the “morse code” of Native Am. smoke-signals (& peace pipes)

“raven-laughter (hoarse / sneers)” : the suggestion behind this poem’s folktale dialectic is of something beyond cynicism or fatalism

No comments: