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
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