[lit-ideas] Re: Happy Birthday to W. S. Merwin
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- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 09:22:13 +0200
On 1-Oct-13, at 11:57 PM, Mike Geary wrote:
I've read and re-read this poem hundreds of times, but still I
cannot guess why Merwin calls it "Departure's Girlfriend" -- why
girlfriend?? Any suggestions?
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 4:32 PM, Mike Geary <gearyservice@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
One of my favorite poets. Love this one: Departure's Girlfriend
Thanks for this, Mike - it has become not only one of my favourite
poems, but also iconic.
At first I thought, 'Ah yes, one of those clever poet johnies' [no
points for guessing what author's works were included in the stack of
books I brought back from a recent visit to that 'green and pleasant
land'].
He's merely playing with word order - 'Departure's Girlfriend' for
'Girlfriend's Departure' - and the poem is no doubt about, or at any
rate was triggered by, some 'affair of the heart'.
But why does that 'merely' creep in there? Am I not being more than a
little facile?
If I'm willing to play with transposition to seek explanation, why
stop at the title, and for that matter, word order?
And so the play begins ...
Substitute 'day' for 'night', 'countryside' for 'city', 'some one' for
'no one', female' for 'male' (the latter two transpositions are
explicitly, in different ways, practised by the poet himself) ...
Is everything allowed? (No!)
But why do I hear the protagonist's 'wishing myself the good voyage'
echoed by another voice telling someone to go to hell (or, at least,
announcing almost matter of factly that the protagonist has already
entered it).
Chris Bruce,
getting carried away
on the tide of
language on holiday
- or is that
language's holy day?
- in Kiel, Germany
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